Factors Influencing the E-commerce Purchase Process of Big High Involvement Products

Abstract: E-commerce is growing and has grown considerably during the last two decades. It is also growing within product segments previously believed to be hard to sell over the internet, such as big high involvement products and this is calling for an exploration of the e-commerce purchase process for this product segment. The e-commerce channel is associated with various benefits and barriers and with sufficient trust these barriers can be overcome. This study therefore explores the e-commerce purchase process of big high involvement products from a customer perspective identifying key benefits and barriers together with factors contributing to trust formation and customer retention. This combines areas of research, not previously explored. The results are based on focus group interviews and reveal that the main benefits perceived were a lower price, easier comparison between options and a bigger product range. The main risks for this product segment seem to be performance risk and financial risk together with the risk of low delivery precision. Main factors contributing to trust were good return policies, good information quality and guiding together with affect-based factors such as recommendations from a friend. Finally, the factors identified in this study to contribute to customer retention were customer satisfaction, after sales services and something “extra” upon delivery. The results confirm some of the previous evidence, such as Venkatraman (1989), saying that high involvement products are coupled with higher risks, but it also finds new suggestions to important factors such as delivery precision and something “extra” upon delivery that may be specific to this product segment.