18 failure of an online-purchased product, personal risk i.e. uncertainty of the stability
of the online shopping process, and privacy risk i.e. fear of the exposure of personal information.
Previous research conducted by Miyazaki and Fernandez 2001, shows a negative relationship between perceived risk of Internet shopping and purchase rate.
The first prediction in consumer behavior literature in regards of perceived risk Bauer 2001: 28 states that consumers make purchase decisions that minimize
perceived risk in the relevant situation. 5. Online purchase experience
In line with the work by Shim et al.2001: 42 found that previous experience with Internet shopping is a good predictor of online search behavior. It has been also
established through past studies that prior online purchase experience may also have a direct effect on online purchase intentions e.g., Shim et al. 2001; Weber Roehl
1999: 32. That is, prior Internet purchase experience may both have a direct and indirect through online information search intentions impact on online purchase
intentions.
E. Interactive Decisions for Online Shopping
The technology available for implementing machine interactivity in online shopping environments has the potential to provide consumers with unparalleled opportunities to locate
and compare product offerings Alba et al. 1997: 38. Such capabilities are particularly valuable given that online stores cannot offer physical contact with products, do not allow face
to Face interaction with a salesperson, and may offer a very large number of alternatives due to
19 their virtually infinite “shelfspace,” i.e., the lack of physical constraints with respect to product
display.
Interactive decision aids that may be of use to consumers who wish to shop online include a wide variety of software tools, ranging from general-purpose search engines to
sophisticated agent-mediated
electronic commerce
systems e.g.,
compare.net; www.jango.com. A common classification of interactive shopping agents is based on whether
a tool is designed to help a consumer determine 1 what to buy or 2 who to buy from. These two tasks may be referred to as product brokering and merchant brokering, respectively see
Guttman et al. 1998. For the purpose of this paper, we confine our attention to the former. Among tools for product brokering, a distinction can be made between decision aids that
operate within a particular merchant’s online store and ones that operate across merchants. A well-known phenomenon regarding decision making in complex environments is that
individuals are often unable to evaluate all available alternatives in great depth prior to making a choice. Instead, they tend to use two-stage processes to reach their decisions, where the depth
of information processing varies by stage Payne et al. 2008. In the context of purchase decision making, a typical two-stage process may give details of as follows: First, the
consumer screens a large set of relevant products, without examining any of them in great depth, and identifies a part that includes the most promising alternatives. Subsequently, they
evaluate the latter in more depth, perform comparisons across products on important attributes, and make a purchase decision. Given the different tasks to be performed in the course of such
two-stage purchase decision processes, interactive tools that provide support to consumers in
the following two respects seem particularly valuable:
20 1. The initial screening of available products to determine which ones are worth
considering further and 2. The in-depth comparison of selected products before making the actual purchase
decision.
F. Product Perception
