Abstract

The noticeable fact about the e-commerce industry in India is that major reason for its rapid growth is result of growth in non-metros or tier 2, 3 cities. With increasing mobile penetration, cheap internet packs and increasing spending power, the e-commerce players are getting more and more business from non-metros. According to Latif Nathani, MD eBay India, 50 percent of eBay’s business is coming from Tier II and Tier III cities. The scope of this study is to identify the consumer traits which play a vital role in attitude formation towards online buying. Five different traits have been considered in this study, two behavioral related traits Technology Readiness Index (TRI) and consumer innovativeness two brand related traits brand preference and brand unavailability and deal proneness which finally result in attitude formation for online buying. Representative samples have been collected two prominent cities Kanpur and of north India Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. Factor analysis followed by Sequential Modeling approach has been used to identify the association between the variables used in the model. Final result of this study suggests that non metros can be no longer neglected by e-commerce players and special efforts must be made by e-commerce players to gain more and more market share.