A Framework for Behavioural Business Intelligences Based on Personality Driven Online Buying

Behavioural Business Intelligence (BBI) focuses on the people, their behaviours, the environment and constraints that influence their behaviours. The aim of BBI is to know what people do and why they do it. This phenomenon gives the decision makers power in evaluating the success of their strategic decisions. The strategic decisions could successful if the reasons which determine the success or failure of their products or services are well understood. BBI is based on data, knowledge and models about people, their characteristics, what they do, their environment and constraints.

There is a growing popularity of Internet as a medium of information search, communication link, and online buying worldwide including India. From the online buyers' perspective, the relevant purchase behaviors is exhibited through the access to Internet, exploring the search features in the sellers' website, making the final transaction and repeat the behavior in future. Although there has been a widespread change in the mindset of consumers by way of switching over to online buying from the traditional physical shopping, the rate of diffusion and adoption of the online buying amongst consumers is still relatively low. The related researches in this area also appear to be inadequate and scattered for taking the concrete decisions and policies by the marketers. With the Internet advancing new opportunities, it is important to understand the predominant personality characteristics of Indian consumers participating in the online buying system.

This paper is an attempt to conceptualize the online buyers' or consumers' personality traits indicative to the online buying intention in Indian context. The objective of the study is to explore the personality traits that influence the online buying decisions and develop personality based decision process model; test the model and design a framework for business intelligence. The model is tested through empirical study done on users of irctc.co.in, an online reservation system of railway tickets.