Gender Influence on the Innovativeness of Young Urban Indian Online Shoppers

The objective of this paper is to study the influence of gender on consumer innovativeness of college going young online shoppers of urban India. Open processing innovativeness is measured by adapting the scale developed by Joseph and Vyas (1984) while the domain specific innovativeness is measured by using the scale developed by Citrin (2000) for Internet shopping. Survey of 150 young online shoppers reveals that gender has no influence on the innovativeness of online shoppers. Both males and females have a higher score for domain specific innovativeness as compared to the open processing innovativeness. They are not very innovative in general but, nevertheless are experimental with respect to new retail websites. They surf new retail websites but are hesitant to shop from new online retailers. Based on our research findings, we have suggested the measures by which marketers can encourage young shoppers to visit and shop more frequently from new retail websites. The recommendations in this paper will be of value to the online marketers, consumer researchers and academicians.