To help identify the factors influencing online shopping, the Wharton Forum on electronic Commerce sponsored an ongoing research project begun in 1997 called the Wharton Virtual Test Market (WVTM). It seeks to understand Web consumer demographics, attitudes about online shopping and predictors of online buying behavior. Consumers worldwide can shop online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. Some market sectors, including insurance, financial services, computer hardware and software, travel, books, music, flowers, and automobiles are experiencing rapid growth in online sales. Amazon.com has become the third largest bookseller in the U.S., despite being in business only since 1995. The prototypical Web consumer leads a wired lifestyle and is time starved. It appears that Web consumers shop online to save time. The most important information for predicting shopping habits-online and offline are measures of past behavior, not demographics. This result suggests several implications for the design of online shopping environments like make it more convenient to buy standard or repeat-purchase items; customization to make a purchase decision and easy checkout process.
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