"Just one click" : utilitarian and hedonic motivations of students to shop fashion online

Abstract: The online shopping industry has been growing over the past decade (Statista, 2014). Former researchers identified consumers’ utilitarian and hedonic online shopping motivations. A qualitative research was conducted to understand the utilitarian and hedonic online shopping motivations of students to shop fashion online. A phenomenological interviewing method was used to generate detailed and in-depth descriptions of the seven students’ experiences of the University of Borås. Respectively three utilitarian and four hedonic online shopping motivations emerged out of the data and could be linked the motivations identified by Vignali and Reid (2014). This paper analyses the utilitarian online shopping motivations respectively convenience, price and discounts and selections and hedonic online shopping motivations respectively enjoyment, sociability, trend discovery and exclusivity. Regarding the utilitarian online shopping motivation convenience several convenience dimensions emerged out of the collected data and matched the dimensions identified by Jiang, Yang and Jun (2013) respectively, respectively access, search, evaluation, transaction, possession and post-purchase convenience. Regarding the hedonic online shopping motivation enjoyment, several dimensions emerged out of the data and could be linked to dimensions identified by Monsuwé et al. (2004) respectively escapism, pleasure and arousal. Some of the linkages that could be found by comparing former research were also found in the data collected. Regarding the utilitarian online shopping motivations, information availability identified by Vignali and Reid (2014) could be linked to evaluation convenience and product availability identified by Vignali and Reid (2014) could be linked to access convenience. Regarding the hedonic online shopping motivations, relaxation shopping identified by (Ozen and Engizek, 2014) could be linked to escapism, social shopping (Ozen and Engizek, 2014) to sociability and idea shopping (Ozen and Engizek, 2014) to trend discovery. The analyses on the linkages further deepened the understanding of both utilitarian and hedonic motivations of students to shop fashion online.