Reading Report#4--Summary

Summary of 《Longitudinal comparison of Finnish and US online shopping behavior among university students: The five stage buying decision process》
In “Longitudinal comparison of Finnish and US online shopping behavior among university students: The five stage buying decision process”, in Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing, July 2006, the authors Charles Comegys, Mika Hannula, Jaani Váisánen “investigate the online purchasing behavior” (Charles Comegys, et.al, 2006, page 336) by comparing samples collected among university students in the U.S. and Finland, both of which are leading countries in the field of Information and Communication Technology. At the beginning, the authors introduce the “five-stage buying decision process” (Charles Comegys, et.al, 2006, page 337), which consists of “need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives purchase decision and postpurchase behavior” (Charles Comegys, et.al, 2006, page 337). By studying the model, the authors come up with several hypotheses focused on different factors’ impact on online shopping behavior and do research in the U.S. and Finland. By analyzing the collected statistics, the authors showed us some important conclusions. They state that online shopping is continuously gaining popularity in both the U.S. and Finland, while Finnish students show a gender gap in online shopping. Besides that, they claim that some products are gaining popularity due to the Internet. The writers also state that the “Net Generation” (Charles Comegys, et.al, 2006, page 353) has contributed a lot to the booming of electronic commerce. Finally they point out cultural differences play a significant role in different online purchase behaviors.