Electronic Commerce is emerging as an important market with great potentiality in the world. Many firms are preparing to take part in this market, even in Korea. However, there are not many studies on the consumer behavior in the Internet.
This study investigates how the consumer behavior in the Internet depends on the purpose of using the Internet. The purpose of using the Internet is classified into a general search purpose with clear goal, a search for the information for a product to be purchased, a purchase of a product, and a surfing without a clear goal which includes relaxing, time-killing and information seeking for his concern.
In this study, it is proposed that two facet of the consumer behavior in the Internet, navigation behavior and response to the advertising in the Internet, are related with the purposes described.
The methodology of this study was the Ethnographic Interview (Spradley, 1979), one of the Naturalistic Inquiry methodology.
This study focused on 4 categories of consumer behavior in detail, the access to the specific site, changing the purpose of using the Internet, the response to the advertising, and the navigation behavior in some specific sites visited.
As results, this study suggests that depending on the purposes of using the Internet, the consumer behavior classified as 4 categories mentioned as above, are different. These results indicate that appropriate strategies should be planned for consumers doing different purposes of using the Internet.
