The importance of security aspects in consumer preferences in electronic environment

Abstract

Organizations have to face both the opportunities that the technologies provide and the challenges that they create in the local or global market as the consumer behavior in the electronic environment is different from the behavior in an actual shop, therefore it is important to not only understand the changing needs of the customers, the factors that influence their behavior but also to choose suitable strategies while trying to satisfy these needs taking in consideration security issues. For this reason, an important purpose of this study is to indicate the factors that determine the behavior of an e-shop customer by conducting a pilot study in Lithuania. The research identified the key factors of consumer behavior in an e-shop. To establish factors determining the online shop customer preferences, five factor groups were identified on the basis of empirical research: product (service) characteristics, delivery, methods of payment, service quality and web page functionality characteristics. The results of the structured consumer survey showed that the factors that positively influence the decision to buy goods online are lower cost, less time consumption, an ability to make an order at any time of the day, and a larger range of products. The key factors that negatively affect the online shopping are product quality, delivery costs, security aspects, delivery time, and complicated online shopping process. The main problem areas faced by online shoppers were delays in product delivery, product quality, insufficient choice of payment methods, difficult return procedures, too little information about the product. After performing the correlation regression analysis of the structured survey, the following relationships are established: the frequency of online shopping is significantly correlated with the product’s compliance with expectations, which indicates that the customers who were satisfied with the quality of online products, more often shop on the Internet.