Gender Differences in Incentives of Electronic Shopping

Shopping is a daily affair requiring significant time and energy. Researchshows that shopping motives affect individuals’ shopping behaviours. Such motives are categorized as functional, socio-emotional, and identity motives. Gender is a factor, which can bring about different degrees of importance to shopping motives. In this survey, seven assumptions and a secondary question are posed in order to investigate correlation between shopping motives, apparent site attractions, type of goods and gender. This study tests functional motives as facilitators and socio-emotional motives as barriers to electronic shopping.Research methodology includes both qualitative and quantitative methods. The respondents are among male and female e-shoppers of the Iranian sites. Meanwhile t and χ² tests were performed for two independent groups to examine the assumptions. The tests approved only one of the assumptions, and the others were not approved. This implies that there is merely a significant correlation between socio-emotional motives and gender factor, and socio-emotional motives are more important for women than men. The results do not show a significant correlation between functional and identity motives against gender factor. There is no significant correlation between apparent site attractions, types of goods and gender factor.