ROLE OF E-COMMERCE IN CONSUMER DECISION MAKING

E-commerce provides plethora of information about products/services, which can be used by customers to make purchase online or offline. Therefore e-commerce can have a dramatic effect on consumer decision making. To understand this, in the present paper, an attempt has been made to study the role of e-commerce in consumer decision making. For this purpose the data has been collected from 560 respondents through survey-questionnaire and analyzed with the help of Factor Analysis. The findings reveal that e-commerce makes the consumer aware about offers made by companies, enhance knowledge and facilitate the consumer to make final purchase. To see whether there is any significant difference among these factor/roles of e-commerce, the data was further analyzed according to various demographic variables with the help of ANOVA and t-test. Here occupation, marital status and education have been found influencing the role of e-commerce in consumer decision making. The findings of the present study will help the marketing manager to understand the use of e-commerce in decision making so that they can frame their marketing strategies accordingly.