Hispanics and Patronage Preferences for Shopping From the Internet

Abstract

The Hispanic market in the U.S. offers promising and lucrative online business opportunities. Spain's Terra Network, one of the biggest online content and access providers in the Latin countries, has teamed up with New Jersey based IDT to provide access to U.S. Hispanics (Folpe, 2000). Approximately, 1.3 million households and 2.3 million Hispanic small businesses are using the Web. Still, little published research exists documenting the shopping preferences for buying from the Web by this growing segment of the U.S. population. Applying the product classification and perceived risk literature from the previous published studies of Girard, Korgaonkar, Silverblatt (2002), the authors explore the Hispanic Web user's preferences for shopping from the Web. The study results and implications for managers are discussed.