A study of key factors influencing the intention of Thai consumers in purchasing books online

Digital transformation plays an important role in these days. This situationalso affects consumers' behavior change and changes the key factors of the business,including the book market. Thai book businesses also face a problem regarding the shiftin consumer's purchasing behavior. Online shopping has brought about the paradigmshift in the way consumers are shopping in today's world. The main objective of thisstudy focuses on a contemporary topic in applied marketing, specifically in key factorsand insights on Thai consumers' behaviors and attitudes that influence the intention ofpurchasing book(s) online.The research methodology was composed of both qualitative andquantitative method. Secondary research and 11 in-depth interview were conducted tounderstand the characteristics of Thai consumers and discover consumers' behaviors inpurchasing book(s) via an online platform in the previous two years, and to help designthe online questionnaire. After that, the questionnaire was launched to 339 respondents.The result were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS). And3 in-depth interviews to understand the perspective of people in the book businesstowards book purchasing users and the trend of the book business in the future.The finding of this study demonstrated that the vast majority of respondentsare Thai consumers who purchased book online are age 23-40 years old due to the majority of these respondents with amount 219 respondents. Also, the group isconsidered potential customers for online publishing businesses because people in thisgroup show the frequency of internet usage and tend to increase more in the future. Theresearch has found that media consumption has a tremendous influence on customers’decision making, including the technological advancement that offers convenientaccess on smartphone and product purchasing on website and social media, such asFacebook, Line, Instagram and twitter. Also, this group of customers focuses onconvenience, ease and fast delivery in which publishing businesses have become to beaware and adapted to the change of customer behaviors. As a result, the findingscategorize customers into 4 groups: People who are interested in 1) Special offers andprivilege; 2) Variety/discount and system support; 3) Service support and 4) Deliveryservice. Above all, designing marketing strategy is an important factor that will helppublishing companies maintain customer experience better.