E-business and its impact on consumer buying behavior in Maldives / Mariyam Hameedha

There are various factors that affect e business, and those factors impacts on consumer online buying decisions. With the increasing popularity of online shopping among Maldivians, e business is becoming vital for companies to achieve greater performance. Hence, identifying those factors that most significantly influence on consumers buying behaviour can lead to enhanced service quality and develop greater e business websites. As such, the purpose of this paper is to identify the key determinants that influence consumer purchase intention in e business environment. Further, to analyze the awareness level of e business web portals in Maldives and the preference towards local and international e-business web portals.
The researcher first focused on an in-depth literature review on the most common factors that influence consumer buying behaviour, which are product information quality, service quality, convenience, security and trust, return policy, information satisfaction, relational benefits and its influence on online consumers buying behaviour.
Survey method approach was used in this study and an exploratory quantitative study was carried out by focusing on online consumers. The samples size was N-123. An online questionnaire was developed by the author using Qualtrics and distributed through multimedia channels. Data was analyzed using SPSS and used various instruments.
The study found that, among the factors that influence consumers purchase decision, return benefits are most significant factor on information satisfaction while, product information quality is the most significant predictor of relational benefits. Finally, compared to relational benefits and information satisfaction, information satisfaction was found out as the most influencing factor on consumer buying behaviour. The research suffers the limitation of sample size and was only focused on Maldivians who shop online. Hence, the research findings may not be applicable to other countries.