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1. Assistant Professor of Economics, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, QQazvin, Iran
10.22034/cbsj.2024.63398
Abstract
Today, Internet shopping has provided perfect opportunities for online business owners. Identifying and improving the various channels that customers use for purchases at online stores will lead to competitive benefits for these businesses. Therefore, recognizing motivations and different channels used for product searching is crucial and this research addresses these issues. This qualitative phenomenological research was conducted based on customers’ lived experiences. A protocol was developed for collecting data from 23 participants selected through purposive sampling with maximum variation strategy. The obtained data and the interview content were statistically analyzed in MAXQDA. Based on the study results, 4 categories were extracted for features of utilitarian purchase (i.e. wise purchase, tangible consumption results, substitute, and purposive processing) and 4 categories were extracted for features of hedonic purchase (i.e. recreational application, intangible consumption results, no substitute, and simple information processing). The results also indicated that the search resources were social media and product presentation by target retailers for hedonic purchase and search engines, online shops, third-party views, and product presentation by competing retailers for utilitarian purchase.
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