The Effect of Gender and Age on the Factors That Influence Healthy Shopping Habits in E-Commerce

People typically eat what they shop for; if consumers shop for healthy foods, they will likely eat healthy foods. In order to influence healthier eating habits among consumers, it is important to identify the factors that influence them to shop for healthy foods. To contribute to ongoing research in this area, we explore the influence of commonly used e-commerce strategies: personality, persuasive strategies, social support, relative price, and perceived product quality on healthy shopping habits among e-commerce shoppers. Research has shown that personalizing these strategies makes them more effective in achieving the desired behavior change among users. Age and gender have been identified as factors that can be used for group-based personalization. We thus investigate the moderating effect of age and gender on the factors that influence healthy shopping habits in e-commerce shoppers. To achieve this, we carried out an online study of 244 e-commerce shoppers. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), we developed a path model using the commonly used e-commerce factors: personality, persuasive strategies, social support, relative price, and perceived product quality. The result of our analysis suggests that social support, relative price and perceived product quality significantly influence healthy shopping habits in e-commerce shoppers. In addition, females are more influenced by social support to adopt healthy shopping habits compared to male e-shoppers. Furthermore, older shoppers are more influenced by social support to adopt healthy shopping habits, while the younger shoppers are more influenced by the relative price of products.