Do determinants of online shopping differ for personal shoppers and professional shoppers?

Purpose - Individuals use the web for shopping for both personal and professional objectives. The purpose of this paper is to show that the demographic profile of individuals who shop online for personal reasons is different from that of those who shop for professional reasons. Design/methodology/approach - Based on marketing literature, hypotheses were generated regarding the relationships between proclivity to purchase online and demographics. The data were collected through online surveys, and the hypotheses tested with an ordinal regression model. Findings - This research indicated that individuals with children, high incomes, and large internet experience are more likely to shop online for personal purposes and younger men with large internet experience are more likely to shop online for professional purposes. Research limitations/implications - One of the limitations of this study is that it focuses on only the demographic determinants, and ignores others, such as reputation and size, service quality, overall ease of use and usefulness of the web site, etc. Originality/value - This paper would be valuable to online retailers, as it will help them to identify their target customers.