Can Online Shops Be The Substitute Of Their Brick And Mortar Versions:a Study On Perception Of The People Of Dhaka City

Online shopping is a well-known phenomenon around the world.Bangladesh is not far behind.A good number of online shops are getting launched.Though there is high potential of online shopping in Bangladesh specially in the capital city Dhaka,there are also some significant shortcomings among the existing online shops.Such as – most of the online shops are not reliable due to the absence of physical stores,customers are not satisfied with the quality of the products,payment system is not that much secured and so on.In spite of having positive perception towards online shopping most of the time people go for traditional shopping.And there is research gap in this regard.Researchers found that Bangladeshi people are interested but not regular to online shopping.The reason behind it and the possible solutions are still need to explore.This study aims to investigate two factors.Firstly,why online consumers are not regular to online shops.Secondly,if the existing traditional shops open their online extensions how the people of Dhaka city will respond to this.Every second,more than millions of people are surfing on the internet and all of them are potential consumers in the online market.Since there are so many online shopping providers in Bangladesh,the most important thing for those organizations is to understand what are the consumers’ requirements in this competitive business environment.The perception about Bangladeshi consumers’ wants and needs is that they demand for trustable online websites.So,basically this study assumes that online extensions of existing traditional shops can act as a reliable platform for online shopping in Bangladesh and tries to explore people’s perception towards it.Online and offline consumers’ behaviors are not basically influenced by age,gender and their general preference of shopping but it depends on the assurance of security,quality and other facilities like traditional shops.Literatures and theories also show that reliability and security are the two most important factors that work behind people’s choice of online shopping and traditional shopping.An online questionnaire is designed.Since the research is an online consumer behavior study,online data collection methods are preferred.The link of the questionnaire has been sent via Email and Facebook randomly to the inhabitants of Dhaka city.105 questionnaires are returned with responses and within the responded questionnaires 100 are usable for analysis(Five incomplete responses have been eliminated).The sample is consisted of respondents from Dhaka city only.The results show that there are significant differences in the preference of people towards online and traditional shopping.And it is also shown that the male and female both prefer online shopping over traditional shopping.The people of age group 29-35 prefer online shopping over traditional shopping than the other age groups.Finally,if traditional shops in Dhaka city open their online websites and provide similar facilities in case of quality,price,security etc.,people will prefer online shopping over traditional shopping.So people’s perception in that,online shops can easily be substitute of their brick and mortar versions and in such case people will always prefer online shopping over traditional shopping which is indifferent to other conditions.The result of this study will contribute to drive the marketers to go to an appropriate direction.As today’s world is a virtual world and Bangladesh is also a part of it,so in near future people will be more attracted to online shopping rather than traditional shopping and if the marketers remain unable to provide better online shopping facilities then the online markets from outside of the country may take over a big portion of Bangladeshi consumers markets.As Dhaka is capital and center for everything so the traditional shops of Dhaka city need to open online websites as early as possible which will provide traditional retailers a secure business position along with ensuring a trustable,comfortable and feasible shopping environment for the consumers.Finally,the study clearly indicates that people will positively accept the online shops as the substitute of their brick and mortar versions.