Segmenting Internet shoppers based on their Web-usage-related lifestyle: a cross-cultural validation

Online surveys in the United States and Belgium were conducted to cross-culturally validate the Internet shopper lifestyle scale [S.M. Smith, W.R. Swinyard, The identification of shopping behaviors among Internet users. World Marketing Congress, Cardiff Business School, 2001]. Special attention was devoted to sample, construct, and measurement equivalence. In both countries, the same six basic dimensions were found to underlie the scale: Internet convenience, perceived self-inefficacy, Internet logistics, Internet distrust, Internet offer, and Internet window-shopping. Except from having the same basic meaning and structure in Belgium as in the United States, the Web-usage-related lifestyle scale also led to the same segments in both countries. Four online shopping segments (tentative shoppers, suspicious learners, shopping lovers, and business users) and four online nonshopping segments (fearful browsers, positive technology muddlers, negative technology muddlers, and adventurous browsers) are profiled with regard to their Web-usage-related lifestyle, themes of Internet Usage, Internet attitude, psychographic, and demographic characteristics.