Analysis Of Consumers’ Issues Of Concern Regarding Online Shopping

Consumer trust

Customers sometimes feel a bit wary of shopping online as it involves providing personal details. Some customers may feel worried that their personal details may be stolen and used as identity theft and that their card details could be used as fraud. This could be a risk on customers as it lowers the confidence customers have with shopping online, and also for the online business as it lowers their profit due to their customers being unconfident when it comes to shopping online.

Lack of human contact

When it comes to online shopping, some customers would feel a little insecure about the fact that they aren’t able to speak or interact with any staff workers like they’d usually do in a normal walk-in store, and so they’d rather prefer to go and shop in the normal stores rather than online. When it comes to shopping online for clothes, customers become unsure over this decision as they aren’t able to try their clothes online as they would if they’d visit that shop.

Delivery issues

Customers, who shop in traditional stores, select which products they wish to buy and purchase them, taking them home immediately, whereas online shopping a customer would have to wait a few days to receive their deliveries. For example if a customer were to use Sainsbury’s shopping online, the customer would even have to pay extra for their items to be delivered to their doors, and on top of that would still have to wait up to a certain amount of days for them to be ordered (or they could simply pay more for the next day delivery).

International legislation

Businesses who sell products online have to not only follow legislations, but laws in which the countries of the customers that live there. For example, in the United States, people must be over the age of 21 to be able to buy alcohol, whereas in the UK the age limit to buy alcohol is 18. If an online business were to sell alcohol online and it was an American customer buying from an online UK shop where the age limit is 18, and they happen to be under 21 but over 18, then there would be a decision in which law to follow.

Product description problems

As customers scroll around on e-commerce sites, they worry about the accuracy of the websites how the description based on the products that they sell aren’t completely right, for example when going on a website to look for and purchase a yellow coloured toaster, in the image it could be seen as yellow and would be described as yellow, but when they actually buy it and receive it, it suddenly turns out that it was in fact orange. This tends to put customers off from buying online from e-commerce websites,

Security issues

Shopping online requires customers’ personal details being used. This usually makes some customers feel uncomfortable as they think that their personal details aren’t safe, or even that the online organisation could use it in an unauthorised way and that they can’t possibly rely on the security of the website. They may have probably heard of phishing how criminals can access and steal their personal details, or how their money can be taken from their accounts, and so it that draws them away from online shopping and from returning to that website.