E-COMMERCE AND TRUST: A STUDY OF CONSUMER PERCEPTION
Dr. JATINDER KUMAR Assistant Professor
A.S College, Khanna. Punjab (INDIA)
PG Department of Computer Science and Applications
________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract
The main reason for consumers not purchasing from the online vendors is the lack of trust. The lack of physical interaction and physical infrastructure in the online environment make it more complicated to establish trust with the respective customers. That is why it is very important for the companies, who want a healthy business on internet to build and manage the consumer’s trust in e- commerce. As we all know that internet is a network of networks, so it is a big challenge for the online companies to build healthy trust of consumers on the internet. The purpose of this study is to find the key factors those are responsible for making trust on online shopping and to study the consumer perception towards the e commerce along with how to establish trust relations on the internet.
Keywords: E-Commerce, consumer perception, Trust, www, internet, online shopping.
______________________________________________________________________________
Introduction of E-Commerce
The full form of e-commerce is electronic commerce. E-commerce is an advanced technology related with commerce and computer. Commerce solutions are more than just handling the business transactions. To manage, organize and performing these business transactions for various products and services online, then there is a need of computer with an internet connection. In simple words the process of doing business online is E-commerce. Whether it’s buying and selling tangible products, stocks, bonds, services or various household things. E-commerce covers a vast amount of transactions of B2C and B2B on the web through internet. It consists of E-retailing, electronic data interchange (EDI) and electronic fund transfers (EFT). In the electronic world consumers are now able to use internet for the number of reasons such as online banking, research, communication and even for shopping. The internet is rapidly becoming the main method of communication and of conducting business conveniently.
In India most of the people use traditional means of buy from their online stores and for them to change is going to take a few years. But a category of people especially the elite groups are using online system. These days www is widely used as a business to consumer (B2C) commercial tool has raises interest in understanding the key issues in developing the relations between the customers and online businesses. Trust is considered as the key to the relationship between the customers and businesses.
E- Commerce providers are companies and organizations that are offering tools and products for electronic commerce. According to Loshin and Murphy (1997) for consumer the most important aspects of e commerce providers are the following:
International Journal in IT and Engineering, Impact Factor- 5.343
Reliability: there is a huge reliability fir the payments in the ordinary business. The same reliability is expected of the electronic commerce service providers.
Security: security issues will never disappear completely, but the security providers must try to find the possible weaknesses and define new security solutions for these.
Acceptability: electronic commerce schemes should offer widespread acceptability.
Trust and Online Shopping
In the present technological era the internet may be the new norm for most of the things we do, how we socially engaged, how we search for products o for anything else and now even how we shop for things on the internet, still there is a fear of online shopping.
Consumer behavior is said to be an applied discipline as some decisions are importantly affected by their behavior or expectations. The two aspects that seek application of its knowledge are micro and societal perspectives. The online purchasing behavior of online buyers and factor influencing online shopping behavior and its future perspective. Internet is changing the way consumers shop and buy goods and services, and has rapidly evolved into a global phenomenon. Many companies have started using the Internet with the aim of cutting marketing costs, thereby reducing the price of their product and service in order to stay ahead in highly competitive markets.
These days online shopping is a really an important part of retail sector. Online shopping is the new shopping experience of the future. Of course the other major hurdles for online shopping is shipping charges, sometimes they are very expensive. But the growth rate of online shopping is in growing manner. Trust is the one of key factor to perform the business on interest. Online shopping requires more trust. Moreover it is more complex than shopping in the traditional environment. On the internet it is not an easy task to establish trust between the buyers and the sellers. The main reason for the consumers to not buying things online is due to lack of trust. A very systematic method is followed by online shopping to make feel the customer’s experience of real shopping by just sitting on their seats and clicking their mouse either from their home or from their office. There are some reasons; due to those people don’t have trust on online purchase. Some of these are given as below:
Unsure of Security: People feel comfortable while shopping on large and popular ecommerce websites, but when they deal with lesser known websites, they are afraid of phishing and other fraudulent activities. Many users bring their online shopping expedition to an abrupt end if they become unsure of the security features of an ecommerce store. There fear is genuine because there are many fake sites where the criminal accrue the confidential information of the customers and use that for illegal purposes.
Slow Shipping/ High Shipping Costs: Online purchasers are often buying goods on impulse .if they realize that it will take weeks for the product to reach them, they may look elsewhere. Moreover, People are not comfortable with paying high shipping charges. Most people purchase products on internet because they can achieve the goods delivered at their doorstep and get discount at the same time. But high shipping costs increase the price and decrease their motivation.
applying taxes to the products then the users may look somewhere else or try to purchase it from the nearest physical store.
Quality of products: The main disadvantage of online shopping is the product quality. If buy some clothes in online shopping means you do not have any idea about the product quality. Because we can’t judge the quality of cloth without touching it. After receive the product then only you know the quality of the product. This is the main reason many people does not trust in online shopping.
How to manage the consumer’s trust in E-Commerce
In the present competitive era it is very difficult for the companies to remain stable in the minds of their consumers. It may be more difficult for the e commerce websites. The studies show that consumer can get awareness through different modes about the e commerce websites as given in the diagram. Here the customer accure the information before purchasing online from different sources. The customer will purchase the products through internet only when he will be satisfied from each and every side.
The e commerce websites can attain the trust of the customers if they will be able to aware the customer about their products and services. When customer will be aware then they may have an interest to buy the product. Once they will get an interest then it will take very less time to convert their interest to desire. After the desire they will definitely perform the action of buying the product. Besides these there are some ways to improve the online shopping behavior as follows.
Security and privacy: security and privacy are the main factors which are responsible for the growth of online shopping. It’s an inappropriate feature of the internet because here information could be easily lost or stolen. The payment details or personal information of customer could easily be retrieved from a database it is stored in through the shopping process. These days customers are more aware of the dangers of stolen data from the web. And they filter their purchasing alternatives against security criteria.
Consumer Direct
Social media
International Journal in IT and Engineering, Impact Factor- 5.343
The online buyer is concerned about his identification and passwords which can be stolen by persons through internet with wrong intentions. So the e commerce companies should take care for their customer’s personal information’s security as well as secrecy. E commerce websites should have free and easy returns policy. Because offering free and convenient returns is a great way to persuade first-time customers to buy, but is also a great retention tactic. If customers know they can return items easily then they may become good post purchasers of the company.
Fast delivery options should be followed by the companies. Because everybody want instant action these days. If customers know that they will receive goods quickly when they order, they will keep purchase with the same company. Genuine recommendations websites can provide huge opportunities to their frequent customers and have the capability to do favor with their frequent customers with recommendation engines. If a customer is browsing for one type of product, a recommendation engine can automatically alert him or her to a relevant promotion or similar product and can also give the information about the special discounts and offers.
The right packaging policy should be followed. Most of the companies do not have full control over the delivery process, but some facts are in their hands as they can ensure that the packaging should have the ‘wow factor'. Moreover companies should give some small surprise gifts to their customers while delivery of their product. The process of registration on the website should be in short and simple steps and the interface of the website should be user friendly. The verification of the account should be accurately considered. As the password and the verification code should be send to the customer’s mobile that is genuinely approaching the website.
Conclusion
In the given study main focus is on the factors from the internet and the factors affect the consumer’s online shopping behavior. This paper focus on the internet shopping that includes e commerce, security, privacy and trust. It also includes the online consumer behavior that has decision making process. The factors influence online customer behavior is also examined. Moreover online shopping is having a very bright future in the developing countries as in India. With the help of internet consumers can purchased anything, anywhere and anytime with easy options. Due too technological advancement shopping is getting better in India. In the brief the factors from the internet that influence consumer online behavior carefully concerned by the online retailers to support customer purchase decisions and improve their performance.
References
Consumer Behavior By Loudan & Bitta fourth edition Mc Graw Hill.
Andrade, E. “Identifying discriminating variables of online and offline buyers: A perceived-risk approach,” Proceedings of the 6th Americas Conference on Information Systems, 2000, pp. 1386-1392.
Understanding Consumer Decision Making: The Means-End Approach to Marketing and
Advertising Strategy by Thomas J. Reynolds; Jerry C. Olson Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001. Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It By Jill Griffin Jossey-Bass, 2002 (Revised
edition).
Consumer Behavior by Wayne D. Hoyer, Deborah J. Mac Innis.
Ramaswami and namakumari, Marketing management, planning, implementation and control, McMillan India ltd, New Delhi.
www.wikipedia.com.
