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...

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"…