E-commerce: perfil dos e-consumidores entre os estudantes do curso de administração da Universidade Federal de Sergipe

Abstract

In the last two decades, issues concerning the role and influence of electronic commerce have sprung up as a focus of survey amongst academic researchers and professionals. Many studies about the Internet and electronic commerce (EC) are grounded in the organizational context. In this article, EC is related to the need to know the target audience, so it was necessary to trace the e-consumer profile of the Business Management students of the Universidade Federal de Sergipe (the federal university in the state of Sergipe - Brazil). The aims were to identify the socioeconomic characteristics of the students, the aspects of Internet access, their experiences with e-commerce, and the attraction factors of shopping on websites. In order to evaluate the profile of these e-consumers, Technographics theory, proposed by Modahl (2000), was used. This theory consists of a model of division of online consumers into three dimensions, mixing demographic aspects, psychographic (income, attitude towards technology), and main motivation (career, family, or entertainment). A descriptive and quantitative research through a questionnaire with students was conducted. Among the findings, 58% of respondents have already purchased something on the Internet, with a greater presence of young people between 18 and 22 years old, middle-class. However, purchase frequency is low. One may conclude that the participation of these students in e-commerce is still incipient, but that they are likely to be large virtual consumers in the future. Furthermore, this research provides greater inquiries into the theme of e-commerce and suggests further investigations in other graduate programs and at other universities as well.