There is a call for the understanding of which external factors have the most impact on consumer’s attitude, as there is no clear outline with respect to the choice of the external factors for online shopping in the literature (Legris et al., 2003; Ahn, Ryu, & Han, 2004;
Kastanakis & Balabanis, 2012; McFerran, Aquino, & Tracy, 2014). The seven identified external factors in this study are perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, e-service quality, social media marketing activities, social network site usage, e-word of mouth, and perceived brand value. External factors are multiple information sources where consumers can grasp their knowledge and information to build their attitude towards purchasing online luxury shopping. The study here examines luxury consumers’ preferences for what external factors affect them in terms of purchasing luxury brands online, and subsequently lead them to make an actual purchase. It proceeds first by reviewing the existing literature on luxury brands and online shopping, looking at both luxury brand stores and then online specifically before exploring the particularities of luxury brands online.
This research contributes to the understanding of consumers online luxury shopping (COLS) in several ways. First, it reviews and integrates the literature from different disciplines to investigate how external factors used in COLS can support consumer attitude towards buying online luxuries. For example, studies of online shopping have been conducted in apparel e- shopping (Ha & Stoel 2009); in mobile TV (Choi & Totten, 2012); digital goods and non- digital goods (Pascual-Miguel et al. 2015); and in travel agents (Abou-Shouk et al. 2016).
There is a gap in the literature regarding understanding the consumer buying process (before,
during, and after) in online luxury shopping, and no study has been conducted to date which considers all selected variables used in this study.
Despite the extensive number of empirical studies dedicated to understanding consumer attitude in online shopping, the online luxury shopping literature remains unpredictable and inconclusive (Yoo & Lee, 2012; Stokburger-Sauer & Teichmann, 2013; Kastanakis &
Balabanis, 2014; Shukla, Banerjee, & Singh, 2015). In fact, several limitations are identified and then addressed in this study. There are five major contributions from this study:
First, most of the empirical studies investigating consumer attitude in online shopping have a rather narrow approach, testing the luxury context in online shopping (Shukla et al. 2015) and the direct link between the external factors to consumer attitude (Carlson & O’Cass, 2010).
Second, the literature on luxury online shopping in particular is fragmented and lacking comprehensive approaches in terms of applying the technology acceptance model (TAM) model (Ahn et al. 2004). Hence, in this research, a comprehensive four-way approach is used to illustrate consumer attitude and the online luxury shopping impacts and aims to provide greater implications to academic and practical communities. Further, this research has theoretical contributions for the (TAM) to develop a new conceptual model (COLS), through four stages. The first stage is to identify external factors that have potential relationships with consumer attitude, which are perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, e-service quality, social network site usage, social media marketing activities, electronic word of mouth (e- WOM) and perceived brand value. The second stage is to study the relationships between consumer attitude and purchase life cycle (intention, actual purchase, e-satisfaction, and e- loyalty). The third stage is examine the central role that consumer attitude plays in mediating between external factors and intention to purchase. Hence, the indirect approach adopted between the external factors and purchase intention through consumer attitude in this research provides a more accurate indication about the importance of consumer attitude as a mediating variable. It is important to note that in this study, formal mediation tests are applied to test these indirect effects. The fourth stage is the purchase life cycle process. Furthermore, it extends the TAM in the context of online luxury shopping through showing the purchase life cycle by adding e-satisfaction and e-loyalty.
Third, most studies identify the intervening roles of online luxury shopping in the relationship between external factors and consumer attitude, and consumer attitude and purchase life
cycle. By including the impact of relational external factors on consumer attitude and ultimately on purchase life cycle, this study investigates the importance of external factors compared to internal ones within the purchase life cycle. This study provides a new conceptual framework that identifies the factors that affect COLS. The conceptual framework makes an important contribution to the literature of luxury brands and online shopping and technology acceptance theories, which will help researchers to identify new ways of leveraging and sharing knowledge to support COLS.
Fourth, although the use of external factors is also aimed at motivating consumer attitude to purchase online luxury shopping, literature looking at the effectiveness of external factors was restricted and did not specify what they were. Therefore, including external factors as a predicted effect on consumer attitude fulfil this gap by illustrating their role in online luxury shopping. This study distinguishes from technology acceptance theories such as TAM, extended technology acceptance model TAM2, theory of reasoned of action (TRA) and the extended unified theory of acceptance usage technology (UTAUT2), as it examines a wider range of variables that affect COLS. Moreover, this study extends from the main sample (country ‘UK and USA’, gender ‘male and female’, and internet level of experience
‘intermediate and advanced’) to provide comparison between the selected groups above, which adds more justification and highlights the differences from the main sample.
Fifth, this study contributes to knowledge by using quantitative methods with rich data for the current empirical study of participants to get a clear understanding about consumers who purchase online luxury shopping. Since the study examines the level of technology usage, an online survey is the most appropriate method to use. This study is conducted in the Western region (UK and USA) as they share similarities in culture as per Hofstede’s cultural dimension (Hofstede, 1980), and share the same level of understanding for buying online.
Targeted respondents for this study are affluent consumers who have already purchased luxury fashion brands within the last six months.
In summary, this study has many contributions and implications for different luxury brand companies, decision makers, strategic marketers, and sales managers.