IMPACT OF ONLINE CONSUMER EXPERIENCE AND UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE TOWARDS CONSUMER PERCEPTION IN VIRTUAL SHOPPING: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN KARACHI PAKISTAN

Pakistan is considered as one of the developing country with a growing trend of Internet users, which is stretching over 20 million and half of them, are opt to do the virtual shopping. The ability of purchasing without leaving place is of great importance to many consumers. This paper focused on the understanding of consumer perception of adopters and non-adopters of virtual shopping, In addition, cognitive dissonance theory was tested in this study. For this purpose data were collected from 384 students from three private universities of Karachi. The paper analyzed the level of uncertainty avoidance in the cultural ground while consumer using virtual shopping. Factor analysis, correlation and multiple linear regression technique were used to analyze the hypotheses. The result of this study revealed that level of uncertainty avoidance and online consumer experience played a positive significant impact on consumer perception. Based on the results of the study, the level of uncertainty avoidance is considered vital impact on consumer perception. The study suggests benefits and convenience that consumers perceived with virtual shopping having unorthodox culture and how this can be improved to make better online consumer experience.


Introduction:
Virtual Shopping has become one of the significant and important characteristics in the Internet era. In this era, Internet is now frequently an important trend in utilizing for virtual shopping. Virtual shopping is recently more convenient and accessible where it gives access to the whole world for different products and services under one umbrella. This is the virtual place where consumer can conviniently access through the e-store and purchase or browse any kind of products or services of their own desire around the globe. Virtual shopping refers to the availability of products or services on different or any e-stores or web sites which is the most important factor in determining online consumer expereince towards consumer perception. Accessing to a virtual store from a different places has now become very popular and accessible with the quick advancement and availability of social media such as twitter, Facebook and etc. (Jun et al., 2013). The Online Consumer experience about an online shopping and what consumer percieved during the purchasing decision is used to identify the key dimensions of virtual shopping where benefits of being available, the website content, information, website quality, consumers skills, their exploratory behavior and easily accessible has been one of the significant motivations to adopt virtual shopping and changes the perception towards this activity. During the recent years, Virtual shopping has experienced a rapid growth in Karachi, Pakistan due to its innovative advantages for consumers and retailers. Due to this there has been different level of uncertainty avoidance  (Hofstede, 2001), evendors may need to take attention when designing websites for international operation. The study is to find those concerns that impact of online consumer experiences and uncertainty avoidance on perception and acknowledging the reasons behind the delay in making the Consumer buying decision as Pakistan scores 70 in uncertainty avoidance dimensions. Further on, the purpose of this study is to examine how online experiences differentiates on cultural grounds and to explore how business firms reach their local consumers by acknowledging their perception that leads to purchase intention.

Literature Review:
The current study investigated the overall online consumer expereince and level of uncertainty avoidance on overall consumer perception in Karachi. The Cognitive dissonance theory is used to develop the conceptual frame work for this study which was proposed by Festinger, 1957. This is the most influential work on determining the consumer perception. The independent variables online consumer experience having antecedents i.e. exploratory behavior and skills and uncertainty avoidance impacting towards consumer perception. According to cognitive dissonance theory, there is a trend for individuals to explore the consistency among their cognitions (i.e. beliefs, opinions). If an exisitance of inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors occurs that means it is (dissonance), there must be something to change to eliminate that dissonance (Festinger, 1957). If there is a inconsistency between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely that the attitude will change to adapt the behavior. According to Burnes, the theory of cognitive dissonance is very important in Volume VII Issue 2, May 2016 76 www.scholarshub.net order to understand the factors that motivate or impede successful change (Burnes, 1996).

Online Consumer Experience and Consumer
Perceptions: Online consumer Experience are build on individuals personal beliefs and its evaluation towards online activities. It showed how person feel towards the specific acitivity after expereincing it which is based on his/her emotions and feel which also is considers as an important element in defining person"s satisfaction or disatisfaction. Kwon and Noh (2010) linked to explore online consumer expereince on mature consumers' perceived risks and benefits in the context of online apparel shopping and the role of age and past experience in their perceptions. A national sample of 293 US male and female mature consumers participated in a mail survey. In this study the Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses. The study revealed that online consumer experience have significant impact on perceived benefits regarding product and price offerings and perceived financial risk which gave significant impact on consumers' online apparel purchase experience. In addition, The more the mature consumer"s internet experience, the greater their perceived benefits. This study contributes to the online shopping literature by extending applicability of such constructs as perceived risks and benefits and prior internet and online shopping experiences to predicting mature consumers" online purchase intention. Obada (2014) examined the link of online consumer experience by the relationship between customers" online flow experience which is an antecedent of online consumer experience and the perceived quality of a brand website. This study firstly reviewed online flow experience and perceived quality studies in the literature, and distinguished the flow construct from other similar concepts. After that, the study proposed a conceptual diagram for a better understanding and a visual representation of the relationships between the two sets of variables. This study also further identified the scales for measuring online flow experience and perceived quality, and used factor analysis that was followed by a reliability analysis of the scales used.
The research problem of the study was how can the flow theory used to extend the perceived quality of a brand website. The study used a quasi-experimental design. The data collection was done by online marketing survey. An email-marketing platform was delivered about 890 emails, which includes an invitation to participate in the study. Study used no probabilistic sample. The results revealed that online flow state experienced by a user while surfing on a brand website had significantly positive effects on perceived quality of visited brand website. After testing the hypothesis of this study, conducted a series of bivariate correlations for testing the relationship between the two sets of variables, and a simple linear regression analysis to examine the causal relationship between online flow state and the perceived quality of a brand website. The study examined that flow was an important construct which can be used by marketers in order to increase the perceived quality of a brand website. The study evidently concludes that customers can experience online flow while they surf a brand website. This study was the evidence of the relationship between the user"s online flow state and the perceived quality of the brand website. More importantly, the result of this study showed that the online flow state influences the perceived quality of the brand website. Willemsen, Neijens, Bronner, and Ridder (2011) linked perception with experience by gaining a better understanding of the content characteristics which is the antecedents of determining the online consumer experience that make online consumer reviews a useful source of consumer information. Furthermore the study analyzed and reviewed an experience and search product that was posted on Amazon.com. The population of the study was (N = 400). The insights derived from this content analysis that were linked with the proportion of "useful" votes that reviews received from fellow consumers. The results showed that content characteristics were paramount to understanding the perceived usefulness of reviews. Specifically, argumentation (density and diversity) served as a significant predictor of perceived usefulness, as did reviewed valence although this latter effect was contingent on the type of product (search or experience) being evaluated in reviews. The relationship between expertise claims and perceived review usefulness approached significance. Results showed that review valence had a marginally positive main effect on perceived usefulness. A positive relationship between argument diversity and perceived usefulness. The study also indicated that negative arguments along with positive arguments contribute to a higher perceived usefulness.

Uncertainty Avoidance and Consumer Perception:
Uncertainty Avoidance as per its definition denotes the uncertain situation or threat the individual feel about the specific event. Uncertainty avoidance determines how the society is tolerant towards the uncertain sitaution. cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance (UA) on consumer perceptions of e-loyalty. This study analyzed the viewing information quality, trust, and system quality as uncertainty reduction mechanisms. The uncertainty avoidance was hypothesized to moderate relationships involving these constructs in a recognized model of were success. The study took data drawn from over 3,500 actual consumers from 38 different countries. This was done for controlling for the impact of other cultural dimensions. The results suggested that uncertainty avoidance moderated the impacts of information quality on one of the antecedent of consumer perception i.e. perceived usefulness, and of trust on e-loyalty, but not system quality relationships. However, the study further analyzed that the moderating effect of uncertainty avoidance on the information quality-satisfaction relationship was non-significant. This indicated that the uncertainty reduction impacts might operate through a cognitive rather than an affective route. The study examined the impact of Hofstede"s (2001) cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance on consumer perceptions of e-loyalty. Eventually the study indicated the results that uncertainty avoidance moderates the impacts of information quality on perceived usefulness, and of trust on e-loyalty, but not system quality relationships. It also indicated that uncertainty avoidance played a significant moderating role in the information quality and perceived usefulness relationship, with the impact being stronger for individuals from high uncertainty avoidance countries. Information plays a key role in reducing uncertainty where in purchasing decisions it requires clear information which assess product or service attributes in order to process the buying decision. Lu, Chang and Yu (2013) determined the impact of cultural orientation on consumer perceptions related to the ethics of online retailers. The study helped in understanding the influence of consumer perception related to the ethics of online retailer on e-loyalty intention. The study took a sample of 949 respondents, which was collected, through an online survey. The result indicated that one of the dimensions of culture consumers with horizontal individualism, and with horizontal and vertical collectivism tend to hold higher perceptions of e-retailers" ethics. The study result indicated that the higher consumers perceive positive consumer perception related to the ethics of online retailer, the more they tend to purchase from the same online sellers. Consumers with horizontal individualism, and with horizontal and vertical collectivism tend to hold higher perceptions of eretailers" ethics. It also showed that the relationships between Vertical-Individualism and security and privacy are significantly positive. Horizontal Individualism, Vertical Collectivism, and Horizontal-Collectivism are all near significance in determining Consumer perception of e-retailer"s ethic. This study drew on a substantive sample of 949 respondents to explore the culture and loyalty intention in the context of consumer perceptions of e-retailers" ethics.

Methodology:
The nature of research was explanatory and quantitative. The self-administered survey was conducted through structured questionnaire that was submitted to the participants through online as well. Primary data was collected through random sampling. The data were collected from 400 respondents selected from the targeted population that are students form three private universities, in that way where every single individual had an equal opportunity to participate in this study. A total of 384 useable survey questionnaires were found for analysis. The already tested research tool was adopted for this research. Three variables, which include consumer online experience, where scale items were adopted by (Novak et al., 2000) where its components were exploratory behavior (EB) which has 6-scale items and skills (S) having 4-scale items. To measure uncertainty avoidance (UA), scale items were adopted by (Quintal et al. 2006) having 5-scale items. To measure consumer perception (CP) which was dependent variable, the components i.e. perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use having 3-scale items each that were adopted from (Hernández et al. 2010). All items were scored on a five-point scale ranging from "1 = strongly disagree" to "5 strongly agree".

Results and Discussions:
Since the aim of this study is to find the impact and relationship between consumer online experience, uncertainty avoidance on consumer perception of Karachi and to determine the level of uncertainty avoidance whether it impact the consumers of different culture ground perception towards the online shopping in Karachi, Pakistan, hence the statistical results findings related to the hypotheses are presented below. Before testing the hypothesis, reliability and validity was determined by testing the data. The validity test was determined by using factor analysis. Factor analysis was used as a method in which it was used statistically to observe the variability of variables that were correlated. According to the .000 The analysis revealed that the consumer online experience (COE) factor has three facets, and uncertainty avoidance (UA) has three, while Consumer perception (CP) has five facets. Seven items have excluded from online consumer experience, one item from uncertainty avoidance and one item from a consumer perception as the automatic removal of the correlation in SPSS that has the value below than 0.5.
Pattern Matrix: .692 CE7 .539 CE8 .707 UA2 .511 UA3 .632 UA4 .665 CP1 .635 CP2 .778 CP3 .834 CP4 .717 CP5 .642 The analysis revealed that the consumer online experience (COE) factor has three facets, and uncertainty avoidance (UA) has three, while Consumer perception (CP) has five facets. Seven items have excluded from online consumer experience, one item from uncertainty avoidance and one item from a consumer perception as the automatic removal of the correlation in SPSS that has the value below than 0.5. These items were dropped from questionnaire because they were showing low correlation, which was below than 0.5 (Hair et al., 2010).
The reliability of data was tested through The Cronbach"s Alpha. The value of this study all variables are greater than 0.6 that is 0.827, which means 82.7% that indicates that the reliability of data is acceptable.  2013), which communicated positive noteworthy impact on consumer perception. The relevant of the variable is a direct result of the quick changes of social environment, family, companions and partner gatherings which may impact individuals purchasing decision making. Consumers take into consideration the factors i.e. threat, uncertain situation, and economical condition before providing personal information i.e. credit card information, personal address and etc.

Conclusion:
The findings of the study statistically examined and conclude that there was a significant positive impact of all the variables online consumer experience and uncertainty avoidance on consumer perception towards virtual shopping in Karachi, Pakistan. In case of Pakistan, The study findings suggested that uncertainty Avoidance played a significant role on consumer perception of Karachi, with the effect being stronger for individuals from high level of uncertainty Avoidance countries. This is perhaps not surprising since information plays a key role in uncertainty reduction, and purchasing decisions require information to assess product or service attributes. Evendors expanding their operations in Karachi must ensure high quality information on their web sites, and determine the type of information needed to reduce consumer uncertainty to a level that encourages online purchasing in Karachi locality. The research also supports the theory of Cognitive dissonance because this study examined that how consumers may experience dissonance when they encounter poor online performance by an e-vendor during virtual shopping.
The businesses in Karachi can capitalize on these findings in an effort to boost the consumer online perceptions. Being aware of what perceptions drive consumers to pick and prefer one avenue of shopping to another allows businesses to better cater to consumers, thus helping them tom improve their experience and retain customers. Understanding online experience and uncertainty avoidance that may be associated with different products and services may enable online businesses to create more positive experiences etc. While this survey helped e-vendors and marketers to gain insight on the perception of consumers and how to improve the online consumer experiences by watching out the level of uncertainty avoidance of certain culture at the same time. These initial findings still warrant further investigation. To achieve a better understanding of these factors, future research should include a larger sample size and more variety in terms of subjects" sources. This study was only generalized for Karachi Market and research has been done on students" perspective due to appropriate given time. Finally, future researchers should lead the research with longer period. This can ensure that they can get reliable outcome about that consumer perception as it is broad concept to handle can individuals can lead an actual action in the real life.