The Effect of Shopbots on Consumer Purchase Behaviour in Digital Market, Bengaluru, India

Abstract

Shopbots are the online search tools which help the online customers to collect the information about various products in the online markets. The word “Shopbots” is the short form of “shopping robots”. These Shopbots help the customers to make comparison between the products and their features from different websites, it displays price and other features of the product in a single page. Generally, Shopbots are the price comparison tools that help the customers in comparing the prices of products in other sites, so that the customers get the best products at the best prices from different online sites. After making analysis through primary data of certain aspects regarding the Shopbots, it was found that most of the people do not use Shopbots as they are not aware of it. Most of the customers’ purchasing decision is based on their brand loyalty and most of them prefer online shopping on traditional shopping. Even though some people are aware of Shopbots they are only using it as a locator from which they can find cheaper products and they are not aware of the Artificial Intelligence associated with it and also it is used only when they make any expensive purchases. Through this study we came to know that most the people are price sensitive and slight variations in the price may lead to a change in their purchasing decision. Shopbots have an Impact on the customers purchase decision but only to a limited extent because of lack of familiarity of Shopbots among the customers. The main benefit that the public received is that they get to know about Shopbots and majority of people are of the opinion that they will be using Shopbots on their future purchases.

Keywords: Shopbots, Price Sensitive, Brand Loyalty, Comparison Websites, Comparison Shopping Agent, Comparison-Shopping Engines, Digital-Divide, Artificial Intelligence (AI)

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