The fashion industry is one of the biggest industries at present and it shows great potential to grow in the future. However, it is not easy to make a store known in the social network unless you have effective marketing strategies such as Facebook advertising. Among the Thai population, 35.9% or persons use the Internet (Numnonda, 2013), and the number of Internet users is likely to see accelerated growth in the future.
Thus, the Internet is not only a network medium but also a transactional medium for consumers worldwide and is likely to become the dominant retail channel in the near future (Yulihasri, Islam, & Ku Daud, 2011). It is likely that in the future, companies will hire a full-time social media manager to handle social media duties. A company should try to study consumer behavior to find out how to persuade their customers to buy their products and services, which would lead to the long-term success of the company.
The buyer will try to gather information about the stores, products or services, although there is an increase in the security of online shopping these days (Veronika, 2013). Consumers would check by visiting stores, asking friends, or reading reviews from experienced customers in magazines and online.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Materials and Methods
The face-to-face interview is the most common and easiest tool of the qualitative research method. When conducting a face-to-face interview, interviewees can also provide a lot of additional information through social cues such as intonation, body language and voice. However, there are some disadvantages of this tool such as the interviewer may disturb the interviewee with directive behavior (Opdenakker, 2006).
On the other hand, a telephone interview does not provide access to the interviewee's body language, so some additional information is discarded. Based on the political problem in Bangkok at this time, the phone interview is the best solution as it is not convenient or safe to travel in the Bangkok area. The interviewer took notes, along with the audio recording, to check that all questions were asked and answered, and to prepare in case the recorder malfunctioned.
In this case, the researcher to study consumer behavior decided to create a series of open-ended questions to be presented to all interviewees for answers, because open-ended questions can encourage complete and meaningful answers that come from their own knowledge and feelings. For example, they had different initial needs, such as buying for themselves or as a gift. Moreover, some did not do any research before purchasing a product, while others read many reviews on the Internet before making a purchase.
Asking open-ended questions provides unlimited possible answers with self-expression, creativity and detail. Probing questions were asked under Socratic procedures to gain deeper information, reveal more meanings and beliefs, clarify information, keep the conversation on track, and identify past experiential behaviors (M. Hakan Türkçapar, 2012). The questions were created based on the Consumer Purchase Decision Process Model, which was the core of the research problem.
A summary of the useful data obtained from the clients will be stated in the analysis part of this paper.
Company
DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Data Analysis
In terms of internal search, which is the customers' own experiences brought to their consideration, 94% of them would not give a second chance to a store they had a bad experience with, while 6% would still give the store another chance. According to information at the Evaluating Alternatives stage from 30 interviewees, 30% of all did not think it was necessary to compare products with other stores, so they never compared them with any stores. In addition, compared approx. 66.67% 1-3 stores, while the rest, 33.33%, had to compare at least 3 stores to ensure they got the best and cheapest products.
Apart from the online versus online comparison, 43.33% of respondents did not try to find offline stores to compare products. 3.33% would compare products with those from other offline stores, and the rest, 53.34% of respondents, said this depended on the location and time available of the offline store. Moreover, the promotion influenced their decision: 86.67% of them would check out the discounted products first, while 13.33% were not interested in any promotion.
Compared to offline store with salesperson, 76.67% claimed that they preferred not to have a salesperson, while 23.33% said that they did not consider this point. However, regarding salespeople's influence on decision-making, 43.33% of interviewees claimed that the salesperson's response helped them make decisions, while 56.67% said they would make decisions on their own. 33.33% would try to negotiate first and 46.67% might switch to other stores if they had to pay for shipping.
When it comes to the purchasing decision process, 76.67% of respondents said that the response time of the salespeople after ordering affected their feelings. First, 90% would complain to the seller if they waited more than 3 days for the product after payment, and 10% would not ask the seller unless they had already waited 7 days. Second, 83.33% would return or refund heavily damaged jokes, and 16.67% would keep them because the products did not cost much money.
However, there were 83.33% of 30 people who refused to give shops a second chance, while 16.67% would still give another chance.
Data Discussion
- Problem Recognition
- Information Search
- Evaluation of Alternatives
- Purchase Decision
- Post-Purchase Behavior
Before purchasing scarves online, all interviewees read reviews from the Internet, both on store pages and other websites, because nowadays it is very easy to search for information online thanks to the availability of the Internet and also the comments of previous customers. They said that good customer responses did not influence them much, but bad feedback did influence their decision. However, there was one participant who did not research on the Internet and did not care about any comments because she thought competitors might discredit the stores.
Most of the interviewees tended to believe their own experiences rather than the comments of others. The study shows that some scarf consumers did not compare products with other stores, both online and offline, because they believed that scarves were low-involvement products as there was little difference between brands and they were not high-priced items (Ranganadh, 2011 ) ). However, two-thirds of those interviewed wanted to compare scarves with the scarves in other online stores before implementing a purchase decision.
Most of the interviewees claimed that it depends on where the stores are located, if these online stores also have their own offline stores, and how much free time they have in these situations. Some did not survey offline stores, with one interviewee saying that she found from her own experience that online stores have a much larger selection of scarf styles and prints. They said that sometimes they didn't need the products that much, but bought them because of promotions.
However, because scarves were low-involvement products, some customers did not care about them. Some customers did not want to pay this fee, so they tried to negotiate with sellers. Most customers surveyed preferred registered shipping because they could track the status and location of products.
Most of the time, buyers would have to pay for the delivery fee in case of product return, so they ignored to claim the products.
Recommendation
- Theory
- Application
There was a small group that planned to forgive the stores and continue to take those sellers into account for their next purchase. Most online scarf customers rated the products by comparing them with those of many online stores because they could browse the stores at any time. An advantage of online stores is that they are open 24 hours, 7 days a week, so anyone can come into the stores at any time.
Online customers should also be offered a return and refund policy and after-sales service to show them to stores. Buying online is a bit more complicated than offline, as consumers have to wait for confirmation from the seller. As the money transfer method most popular in Thailand's online shopping scene, sellers must provide customers with multiple bank accounts to avoid transaction fees.
Finally, Post-Purchase Behavior, which is the most important stage in online transactions, gains an additional dimension because online customers have to wait for products, so delivery delay significantly affected customer satisfaction. However, online consumers are also looking for value in product consumption, so real products must meet consumer expectations. MustarD should use this advantage to attract more customers to the store, such as by buying Facebook ads.
The study found that this affects customers in terms of interest and trust towards the stores. Photos of products should not be too good to be true, and should be shown in many different angles, which may rush them to buy the product. In addition, MustarD should appoint an administrator to look after its Facebook page because regular updates will make the store livelier and generate more consumers.
Also, MustarD should declare its refund and return policy on its site to increase customer confidence.
CONCLUSION
Summary
Limitations
Further Research
Based on the findings of this research, the researcher makes useful recommendations for online stores to improve online operations, which could help increase customer satisfaction and eventually sales revenue. This part should be further studied in the future to investigate whether online customers really take this into account or not. As most organizations focus only on marketing, sometimes they don't pay attention to the buying phase.
Further studies could investigate in detail the post-purchase policies on websites of organizations with the aim of improving customer satisfaction.
