Abstract:
Recent advances in e-commerce have resulted in significant progress being made
toward strategies, requirements, and the development of various mechanisms aimed
at influencing consumers' decisions to purchase online. The relationship between
different packaging design elements and their effect on consumers' online buying
decisions has been less researched, due in part to the lack of statistical power to detect
cause and effect relationships between these elements. This study examines the feasibility
of multiple-criteria decision-making in order to identify and analyze the causal
relationships between the different packaging design elements that are required to
stimulate consumers' decision to buy products online. Consumers' direct, indirect,
and interdependent behaviors in relation to PDEs and purchase decisions were studied
for this paper. A total of 142 students (89 males and 53 females, aged
22-37 years) participated in this study. The results identified several associations
between design elements. The four most important PDEs found to influence consumers'
decision to buy via the internet were graphics, colours, label information, and
country of origin. This study provides the necessary insights into the design of product
packaging by targeting aspects related to the appearance of the products' characteristics.
Correlations between the various PDEs obtained from this study can be used
to increase consumers' interactions with products in e-commerce environments.
