Assessing benefits and risks of online shopping in Spain and Scotland

• Autor(a) principal: Santana, Susana
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Outros Autores: Loureiro, Sandra
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/10069
• topic: online shopping; perceived benefits; perceived risks; consumer behaviour

The use of the Internet for shopping is increasing worldwide. Therefore, it has become very important to understand how consumers perceive its benefits and risks. In this paper, we address perceived benefits and risks of online shopping in Spain and Scotland. Building upon previous work done by others, a three-factor scale of perceived benefits and a four-factor scale of perceived risks were estimated. Women tend to perceive the enjoyment and adventure of online shopping more and are also more concerned with risks than men. Frequency of online searching correlates with perceived benefits and risks but its impact is different in the two countries. It is urgent to research the roles of emotion, interpersonal relationships and social involvement in conducting purchases online- an effort that will certainly require new models of consumer behavior and methodologies beyond the traditional quantitative techniques.