Hynes and Suewin (1982) Conducted a Study

Hynes and Suewin (1982) conducted a study on Internet commerce as practiced by Hong Kong individuals and the association between individual characteristics and their tendency to use the Internet for shopping. Online surveys, piloted beforehand with 20 respondents were translated in English and Chinese and posted for a two-week period in 2007. Snowball sampling targeted a population sample of approximately 300 to 600 individuals who were located in Hong Kong and aged between 15 and 54. 121 respondents completed the surveys, 94% of which were Chinese with 45% being male. Limitations and contributions of Hynes and Suewin's (1982) study are discussed.

Hynes and Suewin (1982) conducted a study on Internet commerce as practiced by Hong Kong individuals and the association between individual characteristics and their tendency to use the Internet for shipping. Previous studies found that Hong Kong consumers rarely use the Internet for shopping and therefore, Hynes and Suewin found it interesting and important for market reasons to identify the characteristics of the type of consumer that would employ e-commerce.

Online surveys, piloted beforehand with 20 respondents were translated in English and Chinese and posted for a two-week period in 2007. Snowball sampling targeted a population sample of approximately 300 to 600 individuals who were located in Hong Kong and aged between 15 and 54. 121 respondents completed the surveys, 94% of which were Chinese with 45% being male. The survey, based on various scales, used 5-point Likert assessments. The instruments were the following: (a) attitude towards Online Shopping Scale consisting of nine items and with a reliability of 0.90; (b) Technology Adoption Scale with six statements based on Roger's diffusion of innovation theory. (c) Product categorization scale that considered shopping and product or service type. The scores of all scales were summed. Demographic variables were also collected.

ANOVA was employed to find differences between demographic variables of shoppers.

Researchers found that age and gender as well as education and income were significant indicators of online shopping with a positive association between education and socio-economic status. However, as compared to previous studies that showed greater tendency of women shopping online than men, this study showed "a near even split of respondents" (14), as well as raising the age of online consumers to 44. The study corroborated previous findings in that online consumers seemed to largely prefer intangible products such as computer software.

Hynes and Suewin (1982) note that their limitations included employing a relatively small sample of respondents and the fact that their data was not also collected from non-Internet users. Hynes and Suewin (1982) were correct in remarking the latter to be a limitation since a comparison would have accorded us a better insight into possible differences between an online and non-online consumer population. Their sample also inclined to be homogenous as a result of the snowballing method (which may have effected objectivity of the study) and this too was a disadvantage in that a greater diversity of individuals would have extended insights into the why's and wherefores as well as 'when's of buying online. Random sampling would have better improved the reliability and accuracy of the study, and the study would have benefited from triangulation of qualitative (rather than quantitative) methods such as observation, focus groups, and certainly offline interviewing. In fact, a mixed methods study could have been employed for greater results (here, integrating the richness of the qualitative mode with the scientific security / objectiveness of the quantitative technique).