A Longitudinal Investigation on Greek University Students’ Perceptions Towards Online Shopping

The broad Internet utilization along with the systematic progress of Information and Communication Technologies have dramatically changed the way goods are bought and sold. Nowadays, even more Internet users prefer to shop online than visiting a brick-and-mortal store. Thus, understanding who are the ones consuming and why they choose to use or avoid the Internet as a distribution channel, as well as predicting the e-consumer behavior is a vital aspect in marketing and a necessary requirement for both e-commerce managers and consumer theorists. The scope of this paper is to examine through a longitudinal survey the perceptions of university students’ adopters and non-adopters of e-shopping in terms of demographic profile and perceived advantages and problems related to online purchases. Moreover, the reasons for using or avoiding online shopping as well as the types of preferred products and services are investigated. The research provides interesting insights on the e-consumer behavior to both academia and industry.