Relations between Consumer Effort, Risk Reduction Strategies, and Satisfaction with the E-Commerce Buying Process: The Development of a Conceptual Framework

Abstract

The objective of this inquiry is to develop a conceptual framework that can explain the relations between consumer effort, different risk reduction strategies, and satisfaction with the e-commerce buying process on the part of consumers. It is argued that the effort invested in the purchase of the product plays a critical role in determining how consumers respond to different aspects of e-commerce shopping. The study proposing a conceptual framework to explain how risk reduction strategies influence shopping on the internet. In terms of this scheme, e-shopping is examined in terms of the effort involved, whose impact on satisfaction with the buying process is hypothesized to be mediated by consumer risk-taking propensity to consumer involvement. According to the framework, there is a positive relation between the effort involved in reducing perceived risk and satisfaction with the process of buying in the internet. Introduction Perception is the result of a variety of psychological processes through which people recognize, organize, summarize and provide meaning to the received sensations, and as such is one of the main topics of scientific psychology, both historically and as a major area of study (Simoes; Tiedemann, 1985; Sternberg, 2000). As a field of knowledge, perception has had a great influence on the study of marketing, especially with regard to consumer behavior. The study of perception has been a subject of great interest among researchers in this area (Mitchell; Mcgoldrick, 1996). The concept of risk was introduced originally on the seventeenth century, in the context of games of chance; the probability of an event not happening, combined with a magnitude of losses and wins involved (Douglas, 1990). Risk analysis has been a borderless academic activity field covering fields such as medicine, social sciences, among others (Klein; Sterk, 2003). With respect to the marketing literature, risk perception was initially used in 1960 by Bauer and his associates from the Harvard Business School in their article entitled 'consumer behavior as risk taking' in which they make the important distinction that the risks that determine behavior are not the real risks, but the perceived risks (Bauer, 1960). The difference between real risks and perceived risks is that the objective risk (real risk) in fact exists, but may or may not be perceived by consumers. The perceived risk (or subjective) is the risk that the consumer notices that may only exist in the individual's mind, possibly leading him to overestimate or underestimate the actual risk, in terms of its impact on consumer behavior (Sitkin; Pablo, 1 992). Bauer (1 960) was the first marketing researcher to propose, formally, that the behavior of consumers involves risk, in a way that the consumer's actions will produce consequences that the individual will not be able to anticipate with any approximation certainty, with some being undesirable. Despite a large the amount of published studies on the topic, including many revisions (Stem et al. 1977; Ross, 1975), the majority of studies in this area have focused on risk perception in relation to product categories. The literature indicates, however, that different ways of purchasing also lead to different typologies of risk perception. This is due to the fact that the diverse ways show singular buying experiences, even when the same products can be bought, leading to the perception of particular dimensions of perceived risks (Wolfinbarger; Gilly, 2003) as shown in virtual shopping, or electronic commerce. These risks can be inherent, the general perceived risks by the consumer towards a category of products, or handled, risks specific to a certain brand or store (Bettman, 1 973). The majority of studies in this area have focused on trying to comprehend inherent risks, not on handled risks. Even if the individual notices a high level of risk in the purchase of a certain kind of product or through a method of buying way (inherent), the individual can perceive low risk for certain brands or stores (handled). …