Factors limiting access to online shopping: A case study of school of statistics and planning Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.

Abstract

This research paper was aimed at understanding the factors limiting access to online shopping at School of Statistics and Planning, Makerere University, Kampala central. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of social demographic factors, awareness of online shopping, price of products sold online, internet access, mode of payment and internet fraud on online shopping. The assessment was made on gender, description, age of respondent, average monthly expenditure, familiarity with online shopping, the speed of the internet connection, mode of payment they would preferred and awareness of online fraud using both primary data and secondary data sourced from school of statistics and planning. In the results, majority (68.3%) were male and the rest (31.7%) were the female counter parts and it also emerged that majority (60%) of the people who responded have ever shopped online and only 40% who have never bought or ordered goods over the internet. At bivariate level the results showed that only description at school of statistics and planning, highest level of education, average monthly expenditure, familiarity, likeliness to shop online in future, speed of internet and awareness which were significant (p-values < 0.05). In multivariate level, factors limiting access to online shopping were only three and these included; average monthly expenditure, familiarity with online shopping and speed of the internet (p-values < 0.05). In conclusion, only three hypothesis were rejected and these were; there was no relationship between social demographic factors and online shopping, Customers awareness of online shopping has no effect on online shopping and Internet access has no effect on online shopping. Therefore the three factors limit access to online shopping according to this study. The study recommends that effort should be taken by the public to have an alternative source of income so as to increase on their monthly expenditure, effort should be taken by online shop owners to make people aware about online shopping through advertisement and also telecommunication companies like MTN and Airtel to migrate to 4G network so as to increase the speed of the internet when connected to the net. All these will motivate people to shop freely online.