Most of the research that has been done has with regards to gender and the internet has been in the USA and prior research in the USA indicates that gender is one of the key attributes and predictors of online purchase intention (Okazaki, 2007). It would be interesting to find out if the factors that hinder or help women and men’s participation in online buying in New Zealand; and hence find out if culture plays a part in the buying patterns as very little is known about the internet and gender in New Zealand. Early research that was done (e.g Jackson et.al, 2001; Simon, 2001) found that males were more accepting to using technology and had a higher perception of the internet compared to women. Recent studies have found that there has been a decrease in the gap in terms of perception and use of the internet between women and men (Dittmar et al., 2004) and this has been as a result of the internet becoming more mainstream, affordable, and easy to use (Weiser, 2000). Teo (2001, pg 134) in his research found that males use the internet for downloading and purchasing more than females confirming the findings of previous researches which found that perceived usefulness plays a significant role in the perceived use of the internet.
The research methods used in the studies are mostly surveys (e.g Hui & Wan, 2007), and the limitation of this method is that their sample size might not adequately represented the population of Internet shoppers and the surveys might have been done on different days in different locations which could have resulted in biasness.
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