Perceived Risk and Online Shopping Intention

As online shopping growth continues, electronic retailers are recognizing the need to understand risk perceptions of (prospective) customers so as to remove impediments to continued growth. One particularly fruitful area of research concerns the perceptions of online shoppers to product, financial, privacy, time/inconvenience, psychological, and product source risk. Equally important is to understand differences in risk perceptions between males and females and also how such perceptions vary across different product types: digital (e.g. music), and non-digital (e.g. apparel). Utilizing an online survey of undergraduate college students, findings show that female respondents consistently perceived greater risk than males, with significant differences for product and financial risks for both product types. The “experiential” nature of apparel shopping was highlighted by online shopping intention being explained by psychological (male and females) and product (females) risk only. Overall, perceived risk was found to negatively influence intention to shop online by gender, especially with females.