Fatores de escolha no comportamento do consumidor na modalidade EaD no Brasil

Abstract

The advancement of new information communication technologies (ICTs) has brought about significant changes in the way individuals relate, interact and consume products. This change has affected many sectors, including the education sector. This research has the general objective of investigating the factors that most influence the consumption behavior of extension courses in the distance learning (EaD) market. Consumer reactions may vary according to social, cultural, personal and psychological aspects and these are the constructs of this research. The work has a quantitative character and the data were collected through the application of an online questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used for the analysis of the respondents, analysis of means for comparison of variables and analysis of variance (ANOVA) to validate the hypotheses of similarity between the means of the variables. In order to identify whether there is influence of respondents' characteristics in the results, parameters related to gender, age group, educational level and monthly income were considered, where three moments were identified in which H0 was not rejected, ie, there was a significant difference of averages. In the search to understand which constructs have major and minor relevance in the selection process, the variance analysis method (ANOVA) was used to compare the sample population mean, and to identify if these means differ significantly between them. With a P-value of 0.000, it was possible to compare the averages and to identify the greater by the psychological construct, followed by the personal construct, the cultural construct and finally social construct. It is concluded that the present research points out directives for commercial and marketing actions; that this theme has gained a prominent place in society in the face of new information and communication technologies; and that this appears to be a strong trend for the near future. Finally, we suggest some ways to improve the study, such as the use of other complementary statistical methods and the realization of a new research using interviews for a qualitative analysis in order to gather information that can complement and improve the present conclusions in this study.