Consumer-s decision to purchase vehicles via digitalized channels

• Autor(a) principal: Götze, Marei
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/142530
• topic: E-commerce; Online consumer behaviour; Automobiles; Online purchase; Decision-making process; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

In recent years e-commerce has become one of the most accelerating internet phenomena changing customer behavior and expectation along the way. Investigating the online shop-ping behavior in various industries moved into focus for research and companies alike. How-ever, as the automotive industry has been slow to adapt to the accelerated e-commerce usage and its customer base only started recently to express interest in purchasing high-priced prod-ucts such as vehicles via digitalized channels, research in this area is rather scarce.This re-search seeks to understand the decision-making process of German consumers considering to purchase vehicles online by investigating the influencing variables of such decisions. By ana-lyzing the data of fifteen semi-structured in-depth interviews using the content analysis the factors affecting the consumer’s decision could be divided into three categories including in-dividual and external factors as well as minimum requirements. The results of this research contribute and exceed previous research in the automotive industry and the investigation of online consumer behavior by providing qualitative insights and explanations of the interrelated dimensions of influencing factors. As the perception of prestige among customers is among the most driving forces of the online buying decision, automotive brands and car dealership should adapt their online retail website and process accordingly in order to provide an appropriate recognition of prestige during the purchase.