Identifying and analyzing the effects of promoting and inhibiting factors in the formation of attitude and intention to buy imported clothing products

Introduction: The number of consumers has grown from 7% in 2016 to 65% in 2021. The increase in consumer demand for online shopping has been exponential. Due to the expansion of online stores in online networks and the non-importation of some foreign goods in Iran, online shopping has expanded through social networks such as Instagram. As stated in the e-commerce report of 2019, social networks such as Instagram have the highest internet purchases. This study aims to investigate the role of promoting and inhibiting factors in the formation of consumers' intention to buy fashion products from Instagram social network stores. The promoting factors include utilitarian and hedonic values, and the inhibiting factors are consumer trust and privacy. Several factors may influence consumers' shopping habits, such as perception of online shopping and online store goodwill. Therefore, in the theoretical framework and the conceptual model extracted by the researcher, the research assumptions and the research questions to solve the research problem are introduced and explained. In fact, in the present study, the researcher tries to answer the basic question of ‘to what extent utilitarian values, hedonistic values, privacy and consumer trust affect the intention to buy online’. The researcher believes that the Internet can help marketers and online retailers to develop their virtual homepage, improve their sales efforts, get familiar with the purchase motives of customers, and plan accordingly.
Methodology: The present study is a descriptive survey according to its subject, goal and method. The statistical population of the research is the customers of imported clothing stores on Instagram. Since the needed number of people in the community was not available, non-probabilistic sampling was used and the questionnaire was made available to people online. At the beginning of the questionnaire, it was mentioned that people who buy the clothes imported from countries like Turkey through Instagram should answer it. In this research, to evaluate the confirmatory factor analysis model, a very important indicator of the square root of the approximate error variance estimate was used. The permissible limit of this index was predicted for this model. Considering that it was less than 0.1%, it can be said that the model has a good fit, which indicates compatibility. These questions have theoretical structures. The statistical population of this study was the customers of the Instagram virtual network who bought imported goods. And the sampling was done with a non-probability method. Chu-Bentler rule was used to determine the sample size. A sample of 170 people was taken according to the dimensions of the questionnaire. To verify the validity of the measurement tool, three types of evaluation validity including content validity, divergent validity and convergent validity were evaluated. To check the fit of the overall model, there was only one criterion called GOF. The hypotheses were analyzed using the SPSS and PLS software programs.
Results and discussion: In the current research, the influences of utilitarian, hedonistic, trust and privacy motives on the formation of attitude and intention to buy clothes online from Instagram has been investigated with the mediating role of attitude to online shopping. Almost two-thirds of the world's population has access to the Internet, so it is no surprise that the use of the Internet continues to grow. E-commerce has become an important tool in electronic businesses, and one of its important features is communication with customers and satisfying customers' needs. In online shopping, the customer and the seller usually do not meet each other in person. That is why the driving motives must be defined correctly so as not to prevent the customer from buying online. The results show that the need to establish social connection with others involves the pleasurable benefits of online shopping. This means that increasing the level of communication in e-commerce and cyberspace makes people feel better about their purchases.
Conclusion: Online shopping is influenced by utilitarian and hedonistic motives, of which the former is a stronger reason for consumers' online shopping and has a greater impact on their intention to search and buy online. A positive attitude towards online shopping also has a positive effect on it, and strategies such as fast delivery and attractive packaging can be used to increase the positive attitude towards online shopping.