Research on the influencing factors of college students' online purchasing behavior

. As online shopping becomes more and more convenient today, people's online shopping consumption is increasing rapidly. As one of the most dynamic groups, today's college students' online shopping frequency is not high. However, behind the increasing desire for shopping, what reasons stimulate the consumption of college students and whether the consumption of college students is rational enough have aroused people's attention. This paper will discuss the factors that affect college students' shopping behavior and give some opinions.


Introduction
Online shopping is a new way of consumption, with its fast, lower prices, variety of choices, and other characteristics recent years becoming more and more popular. In recent years, with the booming development of the e-commerce industry, online shopping demand continues to release, and the geographical network consumption gap further narrowed, helping China's economy to form a new pattern of domestic and international double-cycle development. [1] As of December 2021, the size of China's online shopping users reached 842 million, up 59.68 million from December 2020, accounting for 81.6% of the overall Internet users. China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released the 38th Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet in Beijing, which shows that China's online shoppers account for the largest proportion of 18 to 24-year-olds in terms of age. From the analysis of the education level of online shoppers, 49.3% of the total number of college students are online shoppers. [2] As "high touch network" college students, With the development of the Internet and e-commerce, college students have become the main group of online shopping. At the same time, we see another strange phenomenon: the students who should be studying at the university, why does the campus gate courier pile up like a mountain? Traditionally, the consumption activities of college students should not be very frequent. Is it because the traditional consumption activities of college students are not on campus and cannot be observed centrally to accurately assess the consumption ability of college students, or is it the special nature of online shopping that makes the group of college students so closely associated with consumption activities?

Literature Review
Foreign research on online shopping motivation is richer, and scholars mostly focus on classifying motivation. B.J. Babin classified the motivation of online consumers into Instrument and Hedonie motivation. [3] Childers classifies the types of online consumer motivation (utilitarian) and enjoyment motivation (Hedonie) [4], Peehtl subdivides the aforementioned usage motives into the pursuit of greater assortment variety, better deals and convenience, and the enjoyment motives into the pursuit of aesthetics and entertainment (playful). [5] Some scholars even categorize frequent online shopping as a kind of "behavioral dependence", which is a phenomenon that individuals frequently and repeatedly shop online, and then develop a chronic or periodic obsession with online shopping behaviors, and have difficulty resisting the temptation of online shopping themselves while producing an increase in the time and frequency of online shopping and tolerance. Depend on the physical or psychological pleasure brought by online shopping. [6] There are numerous domestic studies on online shopping, with some scholars focusing on the protection of personal information in online shopping, some reflecting on the phenomenon of impolite terms used by consumers in online shopping reviews, and some enthusiastic about the improvement of the system of consumers' right to regret in online shopping. Some scholars have used a quantitative approach to model the formation of motivation and summarized the concept of perceived risk among college students in the online shopping scenario, examining the relationship between the three variables of personal involvement, self-efficacy, and information-seeking tendency in the process of purchase motivation from five dimensions: economic, socio-psychological, health, time, and privacy risks, all of which have significant differences. Some scholars have studied the current state of consumption of online goods and concluded that online shopping is geographically and borderless, fashionable and fresh, convenient and inexpensive, and can stimulate consumers to buy goods that are difficult to buy in the communities where they live. [7] Some scholars even believe that online shopping can better reflect the "gift idea" and meet the need of college students to have special goods, which is different from the mass goods on the Internet. This is also one of the factors that stimulate online purchases. [8] Scholars from Heilongjiang (A frontier province of China) focused on the motivation of online shopping among college students in remote area colleges and universities and concluded that online shopping has become a regular behavior among college students in remote areas due to the fashionability-seeking mentality, the lack of time for street shopping, and the lack of geographical supply of the desired goods. [9] To sum up, the domestic research content of online shopping for college students started earlier, and scholars focus on analyzing the characteristics of online shopping goods to analyze the motivation of online shopping, while some other scholars analyze the motivation of online shopping from the characteristics of college students' own daily life, and some preliminary models are built to add quantitative factors to the analysis of online shopping winter, which makes the reasons more convincing. However, there is also the shortcoming of focusing on thinking about only one aspect and not combining both factors of college students' reasons and the characteristics of online shopping goods. In foreign countries, people's motivation for online shopping has been divided into various categories, and different types of reasons are composed of even more detailed elements. Some scholars have also studied frequent online shopping as a kind of "dependence". Foreign scholars have analyzed the motivation for online shopping in a detailed and structured manner.

Presentation of the problem
The great development of online shopping has made various forms of online shopping, and these factors have also influenced college students' online shopping consumption behavior and gradually shaped their online shopping motives.The traditional shopping process of "grant whatever is asked for" no longer dominates the online shopping process, and various promotions, live broadcasts with goods, and the invitation of online celebrities have given rise to new sales methods. " "How to guide people to shop online" has become the concern of countless businesses.At the same time, we must recognize that online shopping is a complex process, both the process and psychology of the subject making decisions, but also the object packaging goods, deliberate marketing process.To understand the motivation of college students' online shopping, it is necessary to consider both together and analyze them one by one, instead of focusing on one aspect or discarding any part as in the previous studies.In terms of economic conditions, college students have no income and less economic freedom than working adults, but they show no less enthusiasm for online shopping than adults; students should have more study schedule in school, but iiMedia Research data shows that 77.5% of college students spend no less than 30 minutes online shopping per time.Among them, the proportion of those who spent 30 to 60 minutes online shopping on average was 59.5%. Through the statements of the above literature and the authors' observations, the consumption motives of college students can be roughly divided into three categories: 1. necessary consumption for daily life 2. consumption out of social interaction and comparison mentality of a few people 3. consumption behavior induced by online information.For these three types of needs, the author raises some questions as follows: The major supermarkets on college campuses can already meet the daily consumption needs of college students, but why do some college students buy so many consumer goods? Is the supply of materials insufficient or is there a disconnect between the grade of goods provided on campus and the needs of college students? What are the channels through which socialization and the climbing behavior of a few people were realized in the past, and is the demand more vigorous now because of the improvement of national living standard? In addition to the above traditional consumption patterns, the consumption induced by online information often reflects the nature of entertainment, which may be a new psychological state of university life. Some students receive express delivery every day, and the price of online shopping goods may not be exorbitant, but the frequency of online shopping has bordered on the level of addiction. [10] These phenomena deserve to be followed carefully, and these seeming contradictions in college students' online shopping behavior will be the starting point of this paper.

Analytical framework of this paper
What makes a commodity a commodity? Marxist economics believes that one of the conditions that an individual commodity must have is a use value. That is, when a commodity is desired, it appears on the market at a certain price.The original prototype of online shopping is called 'B2C', the same as 'business to customers', in which merchants sell goods to customers, the essence of which is the same as traditional shopping, except that the network is the platform. The nature of the goods that have use value, this point has not changed. [11] Jean-Baptiste Say brought supply and demand into the study of economics and proposed that supply could create demand, and then supply and demand would naturally achieve equilibrium. This is "Say's theorem," which is also the source of early supply. Say believes that people's demand for a product is determined by the utility of the product, but the utility, the decision of value demand must also be achieved through supply, supply is determined by the cost of production, the cost of production through the supply of the minimum limit of value, the size of the value depends on the utility. Therefore, this can also be simply summarized as "supply creates demand". [12] This theory is the opposite of Marx's, which may seem a bit absurd, but it is also applicable in the context of online shopping and can explain the "active buying" behavior of some college students.
When we look at it from the supply side, "content e-commerce" comes into our view. Content E-Commerce is an e-commerce activity that uses user-generated or professional content as a means to promote and recommend relevant products and services to potential consumers. Content e-commerce is very diverse, video, animation, text, voice, etc. can be used as the carrier of content e-commerce, but its essence is still a kind of "content marketing", in the context of e-commerce, consumer shopping behavior and purchase behavior have been separated. In the past, consumer shopping and purchasing behavior often occurred simultaneously, and consumers would shop with the purpose to finalize their purchases. In the environment of content e-commerce, consumers are not for shopping and the scene, but to open a traffic entrance, through the "content" will attract consumers, forming a fan economy. Content e-commerce is also the prototype of the Netflix economy. This new marketing method creates a lot of additional demand, breaking through the original framework of supply and demand analysis, and is more in line with Say's theorem of "supply creates demand". I interviewed some students at Jilin University to find out the average monthly spending on online shopping in some of the dormitories. Jilin University is located in Jilin Province, Northeast China, and is one of the 34 "985 Project" universities in China, with a high level of teaching and a large number of students, including 6 campuses with 70,000 students. In such a large university, there is a huge market and objective spending power.

Our investigation and findings
The authors conducted a survey on the average monthly online shopping consumption and indepth interviews on the motivation of online shopping for 38 dormitory members on campus. There were 15 undergraduate dormitories, 10 graduate dormitories, and 13 doctoral dormitories; 100 males and 52 females; the lowest average monthly online shopping spending dormitory was undergraduate dormitory 4023, at 204 RMB per month, and the highest average monthly online shopping spending was undergraduate dormitory 4016, at 840 RMB per month; the median was 272.5 RMB.
During the interview process, we can easily find that the per capita online shopping consumption of undergraduate dormitories is lower than that of graduate students, and the average monthly online shopping consumption of a dormitory for undergraduate students is 218, while mastering's dormitories are 91% higher than undergraduate students and doctoral dormitories are 50% higher than undergraduate students. The living expenses of undergraduates are about RMB 2,000, and postgraduates (including master's and doctoral students) are more than RMB 3,000. The living expenses of postgraduates generally exceed those of undergraduates by more than 50%, and postgraduates have more sources of income than undergraduates, such as funding from research institutes, part-time jobs, etc. This situation is expected.
Also, after in-depth interviews with several students, we found some interesting tendencies that more or less explain certain types of online shopping motivations.

The majority of daily consumption can already be met through online shopping
T, who lives in 4013, said in an interview that he has many years of experience in online shopping and it has been a long time since he last went to the supermarket. This "habit" comes from his own experience in high school. Since high school is a boarding school, he usually orders the snacks and daily necessities he needs for school life on the Internet during the weekend and picks up the express delivery to bring to school before returning to school. This way, he doesn't have to take a bus to a big mall far away on weekends or spend long hours in a crowded supermarket line to shop. T's behavior is more of a "behavioral dependency formation" than a "habit formation". G, who lives in 4021, is also a long-term online shopper who does not like to go to the supermarket. When asked why, G thought it had to do with her previous living environment; G was from a rural area and was introverted, so staying in a clean supermarket for a long time would make her uncomfortable and unpleasant, and all she wanted to do was to avoid contact with strangers. In the supermarket, there are not only a large number of customers and shoppers who will take the initiative to contact her, which accelerated her escape. At this moment, online shopping perfectly fits her needs: fast, no need to deal with people. So over time, the "behavioral dependence" on online shopping was formed.
Q, the owner of a supermarket in front of the school gate, sighed during the author's interview, "Business is much slower than it was a decade ago."It turns out that in 2005, before the rise of online shopping, the supermarkets around schools were almost the only way for students to meet their daily needs. Snacks, daily necessities, medicines, stationery, etc. were almost all available in the supermarkets, which were always crowded with people. Whenever a new school year starts, the new students who report to the school are here to buy their daily necessities nearby. However, by the 2010s, when online shopping was booming, the number of times students came to the supermarket on weekdays dropped dramatically, and they could buy everything they needed online by lower prices. After the epidemic, the supermarket's operation was almost worse as fewer and fewer people came to the supermarket due to more inconvenient acts such as stocking up.

Special consumption needs and social consumption needs are mainly through online channels
People with specific hobbies tend to shop online for larger amounts, and hobbies with higher expenses such as photography in general can sharply increase monthly online shopping spending. The need for social spending and the need for unique hobbies, which often require significant spending, sharply increases the average monthly online shopping expenses in dorm rooms. Almost all of the social spending in college students' lives is also achieved through online shopping, such as purchasing expensive clothing, watches, and footwear.
1019's X is an avid sneaker lover, his parents have been willing to buy him various limited edition sneakers since he was in elementary school, and nowadays, buying sneakers has become his daily life. These sneakers are often hard to buy in physical stores due to their novel design and limited quantity. However, there is a huge sneaker trading market on the internet. He keeps an eye on the online sneaker trading market and does not hesitate to buy the sneakers at a high price. However, the sneakers he bought at a high price filled a shoe closet, many of which were as shiny as new and had never been worn, and according to X, he had spent a total of 80,000 yuan on online sneakers over the year.
At the same time, the atmosphere of the dormitory also affects online shopping behavior, one person's hobby may drive others, such as in the 3015 dormitories three members have the habit of drinking tea, and the average monthly online shopping consumption of the dormitory reached 455 yuan. Interviewed that this hobby is the roommate first to take the lead, influenced other roommates, and eventually made other roommates have developed the habit of buying tea and drinking tea. In the mall to buy tea, the price is expensive, and the tea is not fresh enough due to long-distance transport, to the mall to spend additional time. Buy online can perfectly circumvent these shortcomings, so online tea shopping has been a monthly process in this dormitory.
C, a female student in 1015, has an unwritten rule in her dormitory that she should give gifts to each other on her birthday, and the gifts she gives to her roommates are usually female students' favorite clothes. The clothes in some stores outside the school are too old to meet C's needs. The clothes that female college students like are generally new and expensive, and there are no such clothes in ordinary stores.

Internet information induced consumption shows diverse forms
In today's increasingly dazzling marketing activities, few college students are attracted by various kinds of offers and discounts. Student R, who lives in 1022, is keen on stocking up on the Double Eleven shopping festival. After several years of the shopping experience, she is very familiar with various "full sale" activities and discounts. She believes that the great discounts during the festival are an important reason for her enthusiasm for online shopping, as the sales allow her to buy more things at lower prices, which saves her a lot of money compared to buying separately. However, her shopping experience also includes impulse purchases, such as a coffee machine she bought after being influenced by a sales pitch that she might need, but has used the machine only a handful of times since. At the same time, the now-hot live-streaming with goods also influences her consumer behavior. She is often impressed by the exaggerated carry of the salesman in the live stream and decides to buy the goods, yet the purchased goods may not be her favorite type. She says she shops not just for her own needs, but when she recognizes the salesman's way of carrying goods, she uses the act of shopping for pleasure as a reward for the salesman's eloquence.
R's roommate, T, is also a college student who is influenced by online consumption. On social media, the bloggers he follows often post beauty news, which makes her obsessed. She is keen on pursuing the same lipsticks and cosmetics as beauty bloggers, and often "shows" her inventory on social media after purchasing them. She believes that the intense bombardment of information from the bloggers forced her to turn her attention to these cosmetics, and she then fell in love with the "stamp-collecting" style of online shopping.

Analysis of the causes and motives of college students' online consumption 4.1 Consumption pattern path dependence has shifted
As stated in the literature review, individuals frequently and repeatedly shop online, which leads to a chronic or cyclical obsession with online shopping behavior, it is also difficult for them to resist the temptation of online shopping and the phenomenon of increasing the time and frequency of online shopping and tolerance, thus forming an "online shopping dependence." The experiences of T and G above are consistent with this statement. They were reluctant to go to supermarkets either because of their past habits or because of their psychological state since childhood. Over time, the path dependence of daily consumption patterns has become very solid and will continue for a long time if the external environment does not change greatly. At the same time, the sales channel of daily necessities has also shifted from offline to online and offline "two blooming." Online shopping has changed the path of consumer dependence on its convenience and high-cost performance. The advantages of offline time and distance, and the variety of goods are dissipated by online shopping, so it is no longer favored by college students. As a result, the supermarkets gradually lost their customer flow, and this part of the guests met their needs through their online shopping behavior. Coupled with the arrival of the epidemic, which aggravated the supermarket's customer flow and the burden of order, in contrast to the relatively light burden of such online shopping, the shopping habits of most college students have quietly changed to the point that everyone nowadays buys daily supplies online.

Social consumption demand is released through e-commerce platforms
In today's rapid social and economic development, people's living standards rise, people's spending is no longer limited to the most basic food and clothing, and some of their hobbies often affect their shopping habits, such as buying clothes, drinking tea, watching concerts, buying sneakers, etc. The famous and well-known Internet trading platform "get things" is to trade limited sneakers, and limited clothing to start, and now has grown to sell watches, beauty, clothing, shoes, jewelry, and a series of goods trading platforms, and all are expensive. Whether it's X's fervor for sneakers or 3015 dorm room tea habits or C's gift of expensive clothing social consumption, this is enough to show that young people's consumption is far more than just everyday items, they have a great demand for social consumption needs. The higher level of social consumption in offline shopping is usually not completed or difficult to complete, then online shopping is the most convenient way to meet the social consumption needs of college students. However, social consumption is still a superficial factor, and the reason for its formation is the surrounding environment. Citizens in modern society are immersed in an environment of information bombardment, and we are tempted by all kinds of information to learn about all kinds of products, and after learning about the goods that are not in demand, people are attracted to them and then drive consumption. This is a typical example of Say's "demand creation by supply", where people are attracted by the marketing of existing goods that have been created to create a demand that never existed before. After several purchases, this created demand becomes a long-term demand, i.e. a hobby. The creation of hobbies immediately pulls up the average monthly online shopping spending level. This was also evident in the previous dormitory survey, where dormitories with members who had personal hobbies and social spending needs were significantly higher than other dormitories.

The initial formation of network consumption entertainment
The demand is endogenous, but the external environment of the birth of demand has a very important role to play. In the past, the form of straightforward broadcasts of information in today's business seems to have been somewhat outdated, celebrities with goods, live sales, co-branded ... Today's marketing methods are diverse each stimulating the human senses, the maximum degree of attraction to the audience, and then the formation of their own loyal consumer groups. To double eleven for example, "double eleven" full discount activities are very strong, so many consumers will generally be the preferred products and the final payment together with the actuarial until the full reduction, and then together in the zero point of the order to pay, but the actual payment is not the case. The time to pay the final payment can not be completed in advance, so most people in the waiting hour, it is difficult to restrain from shopping for other goods, and then can not resist the temptation to continue to add; at the same time afraid of their shopping carts preferred goods snapped up, so they will use the full coupons in advance; finally adhere to a point to pay the final payment, and will be broken because of the previously planned full reduction, continue to fall into the deadly cycle of the single order, which is also This is why the zero point activity is played by everyone into the overnight activity. The most important thing is that despite the fact that netizens know they are deep in the "trap set", they still make a huge "contribution" to the sales and turnover of the merchant. Also the non-stop marketing and publicity in the social media that started a month in advance laid the groundwork for the explosion of online shopping. The above R students in the "Double 11" campaign shopping will be affected by the "full reduction" of such a scheme, thus invariably increase the amount of shopping.
Gene Kellos (1975) has defined marketing into three categories: "First, marketing is seen as a theory of service to consumers; second, it emphasizes marketing as an awareness of social phenomena; third, it considers marketing, the process of linking the producing firm to the market, through the sales channel." This also explains why live streaming with goods is hot: today's live streaming with goods is biased towards linking the producing enterprise with the market, and many businesses are directly live streaming in the warehouse, giving people a sense of authenticity and quick shipping when buying, making the whole online shopping process more efficient.
The 4Ps marketing theory was first proposed by Professor McCarthy in the 1960s. 4Ps specifically include product strategy, price strategy, promotion strategy, and channel strategy. Product strategy refers to a variety of tangible and intangible products that a company can provide to the market to meet the needs of consumers and other ways to achieve the marketing objectives of the company. Pricing strategy mainly refers to the enterprise by the laws of the market to develop product prices or change prices to achieve the enterprise's sales objectives. Distribution channels mainly refer to a set of interdependent organizations that facilitate the smooth transfer of a product and service to consumers through the market exchange process. Promotion, strategy mainly refers to the use of various means of information dissemination to stimulate consumers, the desire to buy and to promote the sale of products to achieve its marketing objectives. [13] This theory can better explain why many college students know that it is "marketing" but are still enthusiastic about the activity of crazy online shopping.
At the same time, purchases influenced by marketing may not come from immediate need, but rather from an unplanned consumption -impulse buying. Impulsive buying behavior is defined as a sudden, uncontrollable, hedonic, and complex purchase behavior. Jung considers impulse buying behavior as an emotional experience, a sudden powerful and persistent desire experienced by consumers, ignoring the consequences of the purchase. [14] The process of online buying behavior is as impulsive as ordinary buying behavior, and this impulsive buying phenomenon is even more prominent in online buying behavior. Jinfeng Wu's study concluded that online store image has a significant impact on consumers' impulsive buying behavior. [15] Zhi Chen studied the influence of impulsive online purchase behavior in three dimensions: online purchase characteristics, commodity factors, and personal emotions, and finally concluded that two major factors influence college students' impulsive online purchase behavior: commodity factors and browsing time on the web. [16] From the above points, it can be seen that live streaming with goods emphasizes the commodity factor and prolongs the browsing time of college students on the Internet for shopping, and this kind of consumption belongs to hedonic consumption rather than out of necessity. For example, in the case of the aforementioned content e-commerce, people buy because they are attracted by the marketing content at the time rather than because they need the product. Due to the convenience of content ecommerce in the media age, more and more people choose to promote through hype and traffic, ignoring the quality and practicality of the product itself. This is the main reason why many college students are not making good use of the products they buy online, even though their online purchases have increased dramatically.

Further Discussion and Recommendations
To sum up, the frequency of online shopping behavior of college students has increased dramatically under a variety of factors, and the per capita online shopping consumption has also risen. The reasons for the rise of online shopping consumption are: the path dependence of consumption pattern has been changed; social consumption demand has been released through e-commerce platform; the initial formation of online consumption entertainment and other reasons. The convenience brought by online shopping is obvious to all: low prices, a wide range of items, great discounts, home delivery without the need to go to buy on your own, convenience, etc. For a country, online shopping can greatly expand the domestic market and meet the needs of the people, and nowadays it is an irreversible trend.
However, many times college students have hobbies beyond their financial means and jump into the consumption trap due to the temptation of merchants, treating online shopping as an impulsive pastime and not making good use of the goods after spending money to enjoy the content, the whole person falls into a void and is not satisfied, but wants to consume further, thus falling into a vicious circle. So far, some of the hazards of soaring online shopping behavior have also emerged: 1. overdraw the already small expenses of college students, affecting normal life 2. bad consumption habits make people obsessed with expensive clothes, shoes, etc., forming the psychology of following and comparing 3. addicted to online shopping, shopping Taobao, watching live streaming with goods, affecting the balance between normal study and life 4. making some extremely unreasonable price bubbles in the market 5. Addicted to hedonistic consumption, addicted to pastime and uncontrollable, affecting the mental state of the whole person.
College students should establish a correct concept of money, consumption, reasonable control of expenditure in online shopping, and meet their needs and hobbies as their financial ability allows. The role of online shopping should not be taken too seriously to affect their daily study and life.