| dc.description.abstract | Online shopping bears the mark of high economic growth and numerous online
consumers. Thus, the complexity of the website design is crucial to understand how to attract
and maintain customers. More specifically, emphasis is put on the use of the website for online
segmentation, in other words with the use of single or multiple websites. Concurrently,
customer preferences differ among individual aspects of perception. Hence, the centrality of
the study is at the intersection of the aforementioned topics, with a customer-oriented
approach.
This study, therefore, aims to provide insight into consumers’ online shopping patterns,
their preferences regarding website design, and implications for strategic marketing. In
addition, emphasis is put on online gender differences regarding online shopping. With a
qualitative research approach, twelve informants described and justified their perceptions. The
findings indicate that consumers prefer multiple websites when shopping for themselves. The
finding was justified with the perception that multiple websites were easiest to use, saved the
most time, and appealed the most. However, the single website was perceived as providing the
most relevant information. The findings indicate advantages and disadvantages with single and
multiple websites, and that emphasis is put on content relevance. In other words, as long as a
website offers gender segmentation alternatives, they are satisfied. Notably, operating multiple
websites is more expensive than operating a single website. Hence, maintaining multiple
websites could be a waste of money, time, and resources, if the users are satisfied with a single
website with gender segmentation alternatives. Overall, these findings contribute to
companies’ and marketers’ understanding of the impact choice of website design has on
consumers. | |
