Content

1. Project title 1
2. Research Context 1
3. Research aims and objectives 2 3.1 Research Aims 2 3.2 Key research objectives 2
4. Literature review 2 4.1 Advantages of purchasing online 2 4. 2 The characteristics of online shoppers 3 4. 3 Factors of affecting online shopping 3
5. Methodology 5 5.1 Research design 5 5.2 Data sources defined 6 5.3 Data collection methods 7 5.4 Data analysis 7
6. A statement of possible outcomes 8
7. Ethical consideration 8
8. Risk assessment and risk management 9
9. Resource management 9
References 11

1. Project title
An investigation into factors of affecting online shopping within China on college students

2. Research Context
With the proliferation of using internet，the way of living and working has increasingly changed, such an environment enables people to gain information such as pictures, videos, news and knowledge as well as purchase goods through internet. So, The proportion of E-shopping has been consistently growing. Internet World States (2010) reports that China is the world’s largest Internet market. According to “China Internet network information center” (CNNIC) reported that in 2009 the number of Chinese online shoppers is108 million with 45.9% annual growth rate. At present the rate of online shopping has reached to 28.1% from 22.1% at the end of 2007. However, which group of people are the main customers to shop online and what factors drive these people to purchase on the internet? A survey did by Iresearch ( Iresearch is a company that focuses on internet media, e-commerce, online games and other new economic fields, it studies in-depth of understanding of consumer and provides market research for network industry) company reveals that the users group between the ages of 18 and 30 are Chinese main online shopping customers. Due to higher level of education among college students, and the use of internet become adept, they have more demand for the products online, their expected income in the future is relatively high, so they are more likely to dominate the future network consumption.

Additionally, relevant surveys reveal that 32.3% of internet users are students by the end of 2006. The total amount of students’ online shopping in six months is 3.1 billion which accounts for one quarter of those of non-students by the end of July, 2008. (Su, D. & Huang, X.2011). Meanwhile, the competition between all kinds of e-commerce website is fierce. Constantinides, (2004) suggests that understanding the process of shopping on the internet and the behaviors of cyber purchasers is important for practitioners to be success in the electronic market. More specificaly, Chang and Cheung, (2005); Cao and Mokhtarian, (2005) explain that identifying the factors that affect the behaviours of online shoppers is significant because the data can be beneficial to the improvement of the design of cybershop websites, the development of trans-actions on the internet, and the increase on the number of customers shopping online.

In this research, college students will be chosen as research object because they are the best on behalf of student group. A questionnaire will be conducted as the main research way to find out the influential factors of shopping at the cyberspace within China. In terms of the result of this research, it can be helpful for E-business and offer more accurate guidance for cyber marketing. Therefore, it is essential to research on customers’ characteristic of E-shopping and to identify the main influence elements on that.

3. Research Aim and Research Objectives
3.1 Aim
The aim of this research is to demonstrate the strength of purchasing online and the factors of affecting college students shop through internet within China.

3.2 Objectives:
1. To describe the advantages of shopping through internet.
2.To identify the characteristics of Chinese college consumers’ behavior via shopping in cyberspace.
3. To find out the influencing factors of impact on university students tend to purchase through internet in China.

4. Literature Review
4.1 Advantages of purchasing online
Compared to real outlets, many studies have revealed that online stores have quite a lot outstanding strengths. Darian (1987) comprehensivly summarized that there are five types of convenience for shopping online:reduction in shopping time, flexibility of shopping time, saving the physical effort of visiting a real store, saving of aggravation, and offering the chance to engage in impulse buying, or directly responding to an advertisement. Hence, Morganosky and Cude (2000) also believe that they are more time saving and moe convenient for customers as these shops are open all day and their owners are often waiting online for 24 hours everyday. Therefore, college students are able to have access to those online stores at any time. Jarvenpaa and Todd (1997) outlined that convenience was the single most salient benefit of the web-based online shopping.

4.2 The characteristics of online shoppers
Some of the characteristics of shopping online include the regression of personal consumption, differences in consumer demand, the enhancement of consumer initiative, and the co-existence of convenience and product quality.

Cai（2008）identified the characteristics of college students' network shopping are the differences of consumer demand; in return of the personality consumption; pursuit of convenience and entertainment on online shopping. At the same time,Wang（2008）points out that college students' network shopping presented the following features: fashion-orientation, convenience and benefits.

From previous studies, it appears that online shopping among college students take place mainly within the campus, and students tend mainly to use college broadband with their own laptop for doing so.

4.3 Factors of affecting online shopping
In terms of reasons of purchasing online, there is not enough research which has been done by Chinese researchers. Many influential factors on online shopping are discussed respectively by Teo & Yeong (2003) and Forsythe & Shi (2003). Armstrong and Kotler, (2003) state that some elements of affecting customers to shop via internet are social factors and family, social roles, and social status. Family is considered the most significant social factor and has been widely examined (ibid.). However, undergraduate students generaly spend most of their time at universities and their purchasing behaviors are not influenced a lot by their parents because they are able to make their own decisions. In addition, Wu (2003), and Armstrong & Kotler (2003); demonstrate that personal factors including age, personality, self-concept, lifestyle, life circle stage, occupation and economic situation are other factors affecting on accepting online shopping.

Having given theoretical factors by the previous studies, and those factors including social and personnel determine customers’ choice of shopping in cyberspace, objective elements is needed to be considered. Chiang and Dholakia (2003) consider that the price of the the channel affectes consumers’ option of online shopping. In fact, as Reed (1999) said, 85% of consumers look for price information when shopping online. Generally speaking, most undergraduate students do not have source of income, when they purchase products, they often take price as their first consideration in order to keep enough money for their living cost. According to the the commodity information provided by the largest Chinese cybershops(Taobao) the price of producs online are ususlly offered at a lower price than products provided in real store, therefore, those goods with lower prices tend to be more attracted by lots of consumers. Moreover, Szymanski and Hise (2000) suggest that product variety as one of the significant factors why purchasers choose to shop online. Cybershoppers are not only affected by the various online goods, but also by the quality of products. The higher quality of the online products, the more orders will be made among online shopping customers. Rohm and Swaminathan,(2004) pointed out the improvements of delivery service and same-day delivery are needed to increase the intension of online shopping. For this factor, less theory has studied that whether delivery service influences college students shopping online, and it could be the new factor that the researcher is looking for. But apprantly, cybershoppers can save quite a lot of time during the process of shopping by purchasing on the internet and they are able to receive the products ordered online rather than going out to do shopping.

Many research about factors of influncing cybershoppers have been done by those scholars broad, those studies show that the reasons why customers tend to shop on the internet rather than in traditional stores. Although some elements of affecting online shopping have been given in the theoritical part, they are not enough for electronic companies to well understand customer’s basic shopping demand, their online shopping intensions and reasons and other aspects of the needs from customers. Therefore, the research on college student’s online shopping characterisrics and its influencing factors is valuable for electronic business.

On the base of literature review, the study on the influencing factors of undergraduate student’s network shopping will be carried on by using questionnaires, such a way of research tries to find out those factors as useful information some constructive advice for online retailer on development of cybershops.

5. Methodology
5.1 Research design
In order to make this project successful, it is necessary to use a sound strategy for this research. To begin with, quantitative and qualitative methods will be adopted in this research. As Bryman and Bell (2007) state that combining qualitative and quantitative approaches is a ‘common pattern’ in this kind of studies. Accordingly, a mix of the two approaches will be the best way for doing this project because this research needs to be based on these two aspects to address the research questions. On one hand, quantitative research method can help the researcher find out what are the real drivers for Chinese college students online shopping through statistics analysis. On the other hand, we are seeking new factors affecting Chinese college students purchasing through internet.

Next, research design for this project is going to be presented in details.
The previous literature has shown that factors of affecting online shopping are social factors, personal factors and the information of product. What are principal factors and new reasons for affecting college students purchase online? Along with these questions, a questionnaire which is designed based on the related theory will be conducted to collect necessary data from five universities in China.

For this project, a questionnaire will be designed to find out participants’ reasons for online shopping, as this method is time-saving and efficient. Furthermore, such a way of doing research is convenient to collect data from a vast number of participants in different regions, and the information collected has higher accuracy and higher reliability. Therefore, both primary and secondary data are essential to be gathered for explaining the factors on affecting online shopping among Chinese college students.
In China, there is not enough and updated theory and research identify that key influential factors on purchasing though internet among college students, this study is an exploratory research.

Both qualitative and quantitative research method will be employed by researchers in this project because these two methods can find out more specific and more detailed information for helping solving problems. According to the aim of this project and identify the college students’ drivers of shopping through internet, a questionnaire will consist of 25 questions, and it will be designed around the following objectives:

• Personal information of college students such as age, gender, the year of study, internet use and their living cost.
• College students’ attitude and habits toward purchasing on internet.
• College students’ frequency of online shopping.
• What factors drive college students shop online.
• College students’ comment on online shopping

In this paper, in order to make sure that students answer the questionnaire with more accuracy, higher patience and more interests, 25 questions are reasonable for them. Therefore,this type of design will guarantee the validity and reliability of the data that the researcher will collect.

5.2 Data sources defined
A total of 10000 questionnaires will be distributed to college students by e-mail, QQ and direct distribution in five universities in China.
Firstly, before conducting the questionnaires, the researcher needs to identify the source of data. As research objects are college students, therefore, five universities will be selected from five cities in different regions within China. Considering the region, these cities should be limited to capital cities which are located in northern, southern, middle, eastern, and western area of China, and these cities are regarded as represents within their province. So the data collected will help to investigate key factors of online shopping among Chinese students. Then, within these selected cities, each university will be randomly selected from those schools in its own city. Having chosen these universities, the population of this project is college students aged 18~26, this group of students have different shopping habits, behaviours and attitudes due to their varieties of lifestyle. They are able to accurately represent the factors and characteristic of online shopping. Then, questionnaires which consist of 25 questions will be sent by e-mail, QQ and direct distribution to students randomly in every selected university. In order to investigate the detailed data, interview is necessary to be conducted. It can enable the researcher works with the students directly. Whereas, there are difficulties in arranging face to face interview, and college students might be unwilling to accept this survey and reluctant to tell the truthful data about those questions on the questionnaires. Hence, combination of those methods can help to collect data with high validity and more useful information.

5.3 Data collection methods
The key point of this study is to investigate those Chinese college students who have online shopping experience. Following the previous step, it is time to collect data. Therefore, this research will adopt e-mail and direct distribution as the approach. The college students will be informed to send the questionnaire back before answering the problems. For those people who received direct questionnaire, the researcher will guide them to fill the questionnaire and provide a collection box.

The data for this project will be mainly collected by e-mail and QQ from those college students selected from five universities in China. E-mail and QQ are both best way of conducting the questionnaire as QQ has enjoyed higher popularity for several decades among Chinese college students and it can make sure that more questionnaires could be received by students as well as increase the response rate. If taking e-mail as the only tool of distributing those questionnaires, less college students will involve in this project and less information the researcher will collect as the source of identifying the factors of online shopping.

5.4 Data analysis
After the step of data collection for this research by using questionnaire, now it is time to choose a technique to analyse the data. SPSS software will be chosen as the analytical tool because the researchers have experience of using this method for analysis of data. This computer software is suitable for doing this type of analysis. According to the collected data , it will be mixed of quantitative and qualitative data, so there is need to analysis both types of data.

6. A statement of possible outcomes
After the prosess of anslysis collected data through SPSS, the resoults from data analysis will help the researcher find out main factors of affecting Chinese college students online shopping. The frequency of university students’ online shopping and the dissatisfactions and recommondations about E-shopping may be collected. Therefore, the outcomes of this project may be beneficial for the electronic retailers to make organizational objective and strategy and improve their development on offering better products and service to cater to the demand of online shoppers. In addition, the collected statistical data could be valuable for researcher to learn the trend of cybershopping among college students in China in the future as well as to obatin some hidden factors.

There could be possibility that some unknown information may not be collected, so the researcher might fail to dig out some new factors on affecting Chinese college students online shopping.

7. Ethical Consideration
Bryman and Bell, (2007) report that conducting research through the internet as a approach of data collection lead to specific ethnical issues which have been highly discussed and debated. No matter collecting the data based on which method, participants have rights to be safeguarded. This research based on e-mail for collecting necessary data by using the questionnaire, the context of the questionnaire will include some questions related to personal information such as age, major, living cost as well as e-mail address. And apparently, the participants will worry about the reveal of their personal information. In order to avoid the situation to happen, firstly, at the begaining of the survey, we will declare that partcipants will be investigated with anonymous questionnaires, and the privacy of the respondents will not leak out. dWhat is more, the researcher should also explain to the students the purpose of this survey, and offer the contact numbers, names of the interviewers as well as the name and the address of the organization. The students should be told that who they are working with, which enable the participants give more accurate answers.

Therefore, this approach could bring down or remove the students’s concerns during the research process and increase the trust between both interviewers and interviewees.

8. Risk assessment risk management
In terms of the sample for this project, there could be difficulties in sampling equal proportion of male and female college students. Even though gender will not be discussed in this project, the answer from the unequal number of both girl and boy students could affect the accuracy of the outcomes for this research. What is more, for lifestyle variations, some students have different shopping behaviors, such as married students and day students. Conversely, it will present difficulties for the sampling process if we excluded married students and day students. Secondly, regarding to data sources, the five universities selected may not represent more than eight hundreds universities in different areas in China. Thirdly, for data collection, although the way of distribution questionnaire by e-mail is not affected by geographical location, its deficiency is that there could be high possibility of low recovery rate of questionnaire and less effective questionnaires. A reward or a gift may attract more college students accept the survey and encourage them to answer the questionnaires. Futhermore, free presents could improve the recovery rate of the questionnaires.

9. Resource management
Resource required:
• 6 researchers,10 interviewers and 10 typists
• Stationery such as pens and A4 papers (£100)
• Laptops to record the data
• Access to academic library databases
• 5 Recorders for face to face interviews (£200)
• Transport and accommodation costs (£3000)
• Presents for interviewees
Timetable:

|Phase |Period |
|Phase 1: Literature Review |28st Nov. 2013- 30th Jan. 2014 |
|Phase 2:Prepare for the research |2nd Feb. 2014-1st.30th Feb. 2014 |
|Phase 3: Design of the questionnaires |1st.April. 2014-15th March.2014 |
|Phase 4: Distribution of the questionnaires |20th March.2014-28th June.2014 |
|Phase 5: Data collection |10th July. 2014-20th August 2014 |
|Phase 6: Analyzing data from questionnaires |25th August 2014-20st Sep.2014 |
|Phase7: Writing the report |25th Sep. 2014 –30th Oct.2014 |

Reference
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Bryman,A. and Bell,E. (2007), Business Research Methods. Newyork: Oxford University Press Inc. 683-689
Chiang, K.P., Dholakia, R.R., (2003). 'Factors driving consumer intention to shop online: an empirical investigation'. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 177–183.
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Forsythe, S.M., and Shi, B. (2003). 'Consumer patronage and risk perceptions in Internet shopping' . Journal of Business Research.2003. 56(11): 867-875.
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Wu, S., (2003). 'The relationship between consumer characteristics and attitude toward online shopping'. Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 21 (1), 37–43.

A questionnaire on factors of affecting online shopping within China on college students

Part 1 ：Basic information
1. Gender: □ Male □ Female
2. Major：
□ philosophy □ economics □agronomy □pedagogy □literature □history □ Science
□ engineering □medical science □military science □management □the science of law
3. Education background： □ freshman □ sophomore □ junior student □ senior student □ master □ PHD
4. Marital status： □ married □ single
5. Monthly average consumption level： □ below ￥500 □￥501～1000 □￥1001～1500 □￥1501～2000 □ above ￥2001

Part 2 ：Information of online shopping
Respondents were asked to indicate on a 4-point Likert scale
(1 = strongly disagree; 2 = disagree; 3 = agree; 4 = strongly agree)

Comparing with shopping in physical stores, you prefer shopping online.
|Strongly disagree |Disagree |Agree |Strongly agree |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

It is fine to buy expensive commodities online, such as laptops, digital cameras.
|Strongly disagree |Disagree |Agree |Strongly agree |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

You believe that online shopping is time-saving and effective.
|Strongly disagree |Disagree |Agree |Strongly agree |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

You believe that products are cheaper in online shopping.
|Strongly disagree |Disagree |Agree |Strongly agree |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

You believe that you will continue to shop online in next few years.
|Strongly disagree |Disagree |Agree |Strongly agree |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

You believe that searching information online waste more time than traditional shopping.
|Strongly disagree |Disagree |Agree |Strongly agree |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

You worry about that the quality of the products online are not guaranteed.
|Strongly disagree |Disagree |Agree |Strongly agree |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

You worry about your Personal information and bank card password safety when shopping online.
|Strongly disagree |Disagree |Agree |Strongly agree |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

You prefer to pay on delivery.
|Strongly disagree |Disagree |Agree |Strongly agree |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

You do not like shopping online because of inefficient Express delivery.
|Strongly disagree |Disagree |Agree |Strongly agree |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

Respondents will be asked to indicate on a 4-point ordinal scale
(1 = never; 2 = seldom; 3 = occasionally; 4 = a lot)

How often do you surf online？
|Never |Seldom |Occasionally |A lot |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

12. How often do you shop online?
|Never |Seldom |Occasionally |A lot |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

13. How often do you Not satisfied with goods you bought online?
|Never |Seldom |Occasionally |A lot |
|1 |2 |3 |4 |

.

14.How much do you spent on shopping online?
□ below ￥100 □￥100～500 □￥500～1000 □￥1000～2000 □ above ￥2000

15. Did you register in these web sites as follows?
□Taobao □ Dangdang □ EBay □ Paipai □ Amazon

16. Which kind of products do you usually buy online？（multiple choice）
□ clothing & accessories □books, audio and video products □ commodities (including cosmetics） □ foods and drinks □ electronic products □ others

17. What kind of style do you belong to when you are shopping？ □ Impulsive Style □ Conservative style □ cautious style □ Random style

18. What kind of payment methods do you prefer？（multiple choice） □ E-bank □ Alipay or Tenpay □ remittance □ pay on delivery

19. In your opinion, Comparing with shopping in physical stores, what are drawbacks of online shopping?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

20. What is the factors affecting your online shopping?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________