Abstract:
“Online shopping” has become a common term in the 21st century, since the accessibility to the
internet is expanding fast. Hence, the current study was designed to examine the relationship between
personality traits and preferences of consumers towards online / in store shopping. The topic of the
current research was identified as an underdeveloped topic in the field of research since studies have
not yet been conducted to address these two aspects; preferences of consumers and personality traits
together. The main purpose of this quantitative non experimental study was to scrutinize the
relationship between personality and online shopping preferences among the individuals between 18
and 40 years in the Western Province, Sri Lanka. A sample of 200 respondents were urged to
complete an online survey accompanied by Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-Brief), Personality
factors developed by Mowen (2000) as well as a new scale adopted by Levin et al.(2005) to measure
preferences of consumers. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze data. The results
confirmed that there are direct positive relationships between preferences of consumers towards
shopping and six factors; Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Introversion, Emotional Instability,
Materialism and Need for arousal. In contrast, preferences of consumers towards in-store shopping
were negatively related with Openness to experience as well as impulsiveness. This would motivate
future researchers to investigate more on what types of products can be easily marketed through
online and in store. More implications for marketing field and consumer psychology are also
discussed.
