Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
11.5.2.1 Difference Between High School and University Students
For availability, high school students' marginal utility is not statistically significant,
that is, they do not think availability is important when they purchase goods at an
online shop. In contrast, university students' marginal utility, 0.387, is statistically
significant, that is, university students consider that the purchase of the goods that
cannot be obtained at a nearby store is important.
The utility of the site having high saturation is higher than that of the site having
low saturation for high school and university students, but the evaluations of site
saturation differ significantly. Utility for high school students is 2.530, which is
higher than that of university students by 1.085. That is, when purchasing goods at
an online shop, high school students attach greater importance to site saturation
than university students. Similarly, high school and university students prefer to
purchase at sites where the procedure is easy; however, no statistically significant
difference was found between the two categories of students.
The marginal utility of the postage and product price for both students is
negative, and when postage or a product's price rises, utility decreases. Further-
more, disutility from the 1-yen rise in postage is larger than that in price, that is,
respondents dislike the rise of postage by even 1 yen. Although there is no statisti-
cally significant difference between high school and university students regarding
postage, there is a statistically significant difference regarding product price; the
marginal disutility of high school students for the 1-yen increase of product price is
larger than that of university students, and high school students prefer sites with
lower product prices.
The coefficient of standard deviation shows that diversity is significant for high
school students. Although high school students prefer sites with high saturation,
easy buying procedures, and lower postage and product prices, the degree and
manner thinking vary among individuals. Furthermore, the coefficient of variation
obtained by dividing the coefficient of the standard deviation of an attribute by the
coefficient of the random parameter shows that the most diverse ideas existed for
purchase procedure. Because all were estimated as a nonrandom parameter for the
dummy variable, university students are considered to have the same preference for
these attributes.
11.5.2.2 Difference in Use Experience of Online Shops
Individuals who have never shopped online consider site saturation as the most
important attribute. Although experienced online shoppers also consider site satu-
ration as important, its value of marginal utility for individuals who have never
shopped online is 3.147, compared to 1.659 for experienced online shoppers (1.488
lower). A nonuser's marginal utility for ease of purchase procedure is 1.479, which
is higher than that of a user by 0.799.
