Barriers and drivers for non-shoppers in B2C e-commerce: A latent class exploratory analysis

The barriers and drivers of e-shopping, as well as segmentation and behavior of e-shoppers, have been long studied in the last two decades, but the behavior of non-shoppers in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce is still an open field for research which has seldom been dealt with. Our exploratory study has as its main objective the classification of non-shoppers in B2C e-commerce based on the barriers which keep deterring them from purchasing on the Internet and the drivers which might lead them to engage in e-shopping. In order to achieve this goal, data was gathered from 1499 Spanish respondents from a nationwide household panel survey. The responses were analyzed using a latent class analysis (LCA) approach and the results show four different types of non-shoppers based on the barriers for online shopping, while six different groups were identified based on the drivers to start shopping on the Internet. Implications for research and practice from the findings of the study are discussed in the final section. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.