The Influence of Gender on Online Consumer Decision Making: A Review

Abstract

The globalized business community and policymakers need to understand how gender influences the consumption decisions of online consumers, to enable them do better planning. The extant literature shows that men and women behave differently regarding how they make online decisions. This study seeks to analyze the findings of the extant literature, toward highlighting research gaps that need further investigation. To do this, fifty peer-reviewed papers on gender-related online consumer studies are sampled from 33 journals. The study, among other observations, finds that more experiments are needed to supplement the survey method in the field investigations. It also identifies that there is a need for further studies to test the effects of cross-cultural differences on online consumption, within the context of gender. Other research gaps that need further attention are comparative studies on how different age groups of the same gender behave online, testing the effects of gender on online commerce between developing economies and developed economies, as well as broadening the scope of the research from online shopping to other areas such as online ticket booking, and online entertainment services.