Shopping Cart Abandonment Essay

This is because visiting their websites can be done over the internet by people from all over the world. As of today, people can purchase items overseas and have them delivered to their country and sometimes even to their doorstep and this has really improved the shoppers’ experience. The use of e-commerce shopping cart is the digital version of using land-based shopping carts that are used in supermarkets. The shopping cart is software that facilitates the process of buying from ordering a product, tracking its shipping, making payment until delivery (BigCommerce, 2018). It bridges the gap between buying and shopping. However, there is increased concern relating to the rate of shopping cart abandonment among the buyers. In this case, it means that the buyers select products and add them to their cart but later leave the website without buying during the check-out stage.

There are various reasons why customers may abandon the carts. Research by Marketingprofs (2016) has shown that 34% of customers abandon the cart because they were just researching on the products and didn’t have any plans of buying. 23% of the buyers abandon due to the inconveniences in time as well as the costs of shipping, 18% are due to very high prices which the customers want to compare, 15% later buy the products in stores, 6% is affected by the payment options which they sometimes cannot afford and 4% is due to lack of good internet connections and technical issues which make the patients abandon their carts. Wildeboer (2014), reports that these types of customers are known as hedonic shoppers. It is questionable why a person would spend their time adding items to the cart and later abandon them is their intentions were not to buy.

Why would they even lift the cart in the first place knowing too well that they aren’t going to buy? In 1982, Hirschman and Hollbrook defined the motivations of hedonic shoppers as those intrigued by fantasies, emotive and multisensory aspects (Researchgate, 2012). This is the contrast of utilitarian shoppers who are task oriented and their have a specific goal that they want to achieve through shopping. As for the hedonic shoppers, they are always seeking for an intrinsic experience of having fun, fantasy and amusement. The issue of shopping cart abandonment, although not good for retailers should not be entirely viewed as negative since it helps the hedonic shoppers have an experience of what real shopping should be and this motivates them to visit the website later when they are ready to make purchases.

It is not easy to control hedonic behaviors among buyers even due to the fact that whenever a shopper visits a site it wouldn’t be possible to predict if they are buying or not (Wildeboer, 2014). In all this, the most important lesson would be for the retailers’ website not to consider these as lost sales but rather as marketing strategies to make their products known to prospective buyers. Addressing the common causes of shopping abandonment should be done rather than dwelling so much on hedonic shoppers. This includes but not limited to offering checkout options for guests, reviewing the extra costs in the checkout stage, optimizing the website such that it can be used on several browsers to avoid technical issues, reducing the shipping costs and providing several methods of making payments.