The dark and bright side of online consumer behavior

With electronic commerce becoming a crucial aspect of marketing strategy and customer relations (Thaichon et al., 2021), there is a growing need to develop new knowledge, models, and theories about online consumer behavior (Anesbury et al., 2016; Davydenko & Peetz, 2020). According to the new ClickZ research, when consumers realize what they are looking for, 50% of e-commerce journeys will start from a retail website and 50% will start with a search engine (Collins, 2018). Needless to say, the online shopping market is evolving at an unprecedented pace. In fact, researchers have recognized that the range of Internet-enabled devices that consumers use to search or purchase products online has expanded (Kumar et al., 2020; Yadav & Pavlou, 2020). With each device that allows individuals to access online retail offerings, such as computers, smartphones, tablets, and Internet-enabled TVs, online shopping is not only becoming more versatile but also more complex. Therefore, consumer online behavior is an increasingly popular topic among practitioners and has received increasing attention in academic literature as a result (e.g., Fu et al., 2020; Wagner et al., 2020).