The purpose of this paper is to explore factors that impact online consumer behaviour via e-commerce platforms, especially Shopee Vietnam. In order to achieve this goal, it is essensial to find out the key motivations that lead to the buying decision of online consumers. Particularly, website, price, delivery and privacy are determined as four basic elements. Therefore, the mothodology will be qualitative research which includes data from in-depth interviews with Vietnamese consumers who has online shopping experiences via e-commerce sites. The in-depth interviews that invovle open-ended question in a semi-structured manner are supposed suceessfully investigate wether these four factors motives consumers to puchase online. At the same time, by applying the method of in-depth interviews, it is expected to find out consumers‘
attitudes and behaviours towards e-commerce sites from their realistic responses. The six steps of theme analysis were used to analyze the collected data.
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3.1. Research type
Qualitative research has been applied to conduct the study, thus strongly support the main goal of this thesis. In other words, this method was used to investigate basic elements influence online consumers behaviours via e-commerce sites and describe how these factors drive their puchase decisions. In term of relevant human interaction issues, the use of in-depth interviews has become more and more popular now. The most common type of the in-depth interviews is one-to-one interviews. The in-depth interviews allow respondents feel free to express themselves, thus should give honest answers that investigators may not have thought before (Adams et al., 2018). Hence, the respones are always personalized and specific.
According to Corbin & Strauss (2014), qualitative research generally is consider as type of research in which questionaires are used to gather and analyze through interviews. Because ofopen and flexible characteristics, qualitative approach may provide to the researcher diverse and unexpected responses Corbin & Strauss (2014). As a result, qualitative approach truly facilitates the curent research which explore factors impact online consumer behaviours and figure out how they drives during online consumer buying process via e-commerce sites. By applying qualitative research, the data of Vietnamese shoppers about their personalities, purchasing methods, shopping habits and attitudes towards Shoppee has been shown. This significantly support the primary objectives of this paper. Based on collected data, it is confirmed that websites, products, prices, delivery services and privacy are five basic components motive Vietnamese consumer to purchase online.
3.2. Method of data collection
As a result, the in-depth interviews has been applied as qualitative data collection method to explore factors that inlfluence consumers‘ online shopping behaviours via e-commerce sites, which is the main purpose of this paper. Specially, the one-to-one interviews that are commonly conducted face to face have been used to gather primary data (Coughlan, 2009).
Moreover, Ryan et al. (2009) state that the individual interview is such a useful way to learn more about human responses, understandings, as well as their inner and realistic experiences, which effectively support the social and behavioural research. And one of the most popular types of interviews is used to approach potential interviewees, which is semi-structures interviews.
Furthermore, the semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions provide a more flexiable approach during the interview process. It permits the interviewer to gain unexpected responses from the interviewee (Coughlan, 2009). In this case, the topic is viewed under a variety of subjective ways of participants, thus the issues are explored from an individual perspectives.
Under the same concept, their responses thus may contain similar or different comments and opinion. This allows the author has a wider point of view about one specific concept.
Nevertheless, the interviews usually require a high level of knowledge and skills of the interviewer. To build a good relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee, the
23 interviewer should have a easygoing, confident and attentive approach. Therefore, in a comfortable environment, the interviewee should feel free to share their true responses and provide necessary data to the interviewer (Coughlan, 2009).
Since the aim of this paper is invetigating elements drive online shopper behaviours via e-commerce sites like Shopee Vietnam. So that Vietnamese consumers who have experiences in frequently online shopping via Shoppee Vietnam are selected as participants to conduct the research. It is recommennded that the number between of interviews should be five and twenty-five for phenomenological study, which concentrates on people’s experiences (Creswell, 1998, as cited in Guest et al., 2006). Therefore, there are 12 people participarte in the interview. In more detail, all of them millenials that include people born between 1981 and 1996 and have full-time job. Because of belonging to the generation that uses shopping online the most in Vietnam (Statista, 2021), they are expected to give approciate responses to support the research.
Additionally, Ryan et al. (2009) states that in-depth interview is is a costly and time-consuming method of data collections as it takes such a long time to allow participants talk about their experiencces, belief and behaviours. Hence, depend on how participant feel comfortable to share their stories and how much experience in online purchasing via e-commerce sites, the author plan to conduct the interview in 30 to 40 minutes with each interviewee. The interviews have been done in Vietnamese. By communicating in the same local language, the information exchanged will be surely accurate, advoiding any uneccessary misunderstanding.
In particular, participants were interviewed on Zoom , which is one of the most poppular video communication mobile app due to the limitation of current situation and the geographical barrier.
For the aim of research, all conversations were recoreded by the recording feature on mobile app.
Then, the transcript of the recording was checked by both interviewer and interviewee to make sure the interview content is accurate and truthful before being translated from Vietnamese to English. And in terms of ethics and privacy, all information for data collection are anonymised and personal data of participants is not presented in the research process (Adams & Cox, 2008).
3.3. Interview guide
According to Coughlan (2009), an interview is such as flexiable and effective way to gather qualitative data. Especially, to investigate online consumer behaviours, this method is recommended to be used to gain information on participant‘ experiences. In addition, the interview guide is settled by the format of the interview, the nature of the research, the goal and objectives of the study as the very first stage of the interview creation process (Coughlan, 2009).
There are a list of 20 open-ended questions have been createds in the semi-stadarlized interviews. It is true that interviews with less structured always make participant feel more comfortable in sharing information and relevant issues (Adams & Cox, 2008).
24 There is no doubt that all interview questions should follow a logical and reliable sequence that allows the interviewees feel free to provide valuable information and helps the interviewer gather necessary data (Coughlan, 2009). To begin with, a basic introduction of the study and the main topic were presented to the interviewees to ensure they know exactly what they were being asked about. At the same time, some simple questions such as demographic information were given to the interviewees to comfort them and help the interview begin in a nartural way. Then, they were asked about their frequently shopping habits and wether they prefer online shopping via e-commerce sites. More descriptive questions about their online purchasing process and which motivations lead them continuously buy online were also given. By asking these questions, the interviewer did collect various answers about their realistic experiences in pruchasing online, which significantly support the aim of this research. Due to the flexibitily of the in-depth interviews, the numbers of questions for each interviewee are different.
3.4. Analysis approach
For Alhojailan & Ibrahim (2012), one of qualitative analysis’s types is thematic analysis.
Because of the ability of diversifying interpretations and being consistent with the data set, thematic analysis is such a useful tool to discover and identify factors that impact a typical issue that is caused by participants. In this case, since the research focuses on the online consumer behaviours and components that inluence consumers‘ online shopping via e-commerce sites based on their experiences, their interpretations may show resonable explainations for thier behaviours, actions and though. Thematic analysis thus is applied to analyse classification and present data-related themes, and shows a logical structure (Alhojailan & Ibrahim, 2012),
In particular, a list of four main phases of the thematic analysis as follows:
• Data reduction
• Themes‘ reliability and validity
• Data display
• Data drawing and conclusion
According to Alhojailan & Ibrahim (2012), at the beginning of the thematic analysis process is data reduction which is the process of choosing, simplifying and transforming the data. After gathering, the data was transcirpted by using professional transcription method and transformed into text in Microsoft Word. But not all of collected data were used. Hence, all of the participants‘ sentences relating to the objectives of the research were highlighed after being analysing word-by-word. Moreover, coding is the next steps so as to create a link between variety parts of the data. In others words, the responses of the participants are used to create coding which helps these highlighted sentences being broken into smaller themes. And in the thematic analysis, it is crucial to review themes if they represent the whole of the text which involed in the stage of t hemes‘ reliability and validity (Alhojailan & Ibrahim, 2012).
25 Alhojailan & Ibrahim (2012) also state that the third phase of the thematic analysis is data display. By displaying, the data related to each questions was organized in a systematic way.
This helps the researcher to understand the differences, similarities and relationships bu arranging the data into conceptual group for analysis (Alhojailan & Ibrahim, 2012). In this study presented figures and tables of categories to display the data. Finally, the last step is data drawing and conclusion which explain and show the meaning from the data.