On gender differences in consumer behavior for online financial transaction of cosmetics

Abstract

The popularity of the Internet has enabled a wide variety of services. Due to increasing pricing levels and material costs over years, enterprises have intended to lower their financial costs by Internet marketing and online financial transactions, by which renting cost, facility setup cost and manpower cost can be saved, and advertising cost is lowered for increasing the number of potential customers. Hence, Internet marketing and online financial transactions have become a market territory for which each enterprise competes. In the market, male consumers no longer mainly shop for 3C products online, and now are becoming more diverse in their shopping selections. Male cosmetics and skincare products comprise a market with great growth potential that is yet to be developed. The purpose of this study is to explore whether gender differences exist or not in perception, importance and satisfaction for online financial transactions of cosmetics. The online questionnaire survey method was used for this study. A total of 600 surveys were distributed. Once the invalid replies were excluded, a total of 567 effective samples were recovered. The results from this study show significant gender differences in the "amount of money spent per purchase of cosmetics", "the most recent online purchase of cosmetics", "the time spent on cosmetics", "amount of money spent each month on cosmetics", "amount of money spent per time on cosmetics", "the time spent on buying cosmetics online" and "the satisfaction with the most recent online purchase of cosmetics". There were also significant differences in the level of importance assigned to "brand reputation", "fresh scent", "natural ingredients", "reasonable price", "suitable skin type", "professionalism of service personnel", "recommended by advertising" and "ease of use". (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.