The Virtual Consumer

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The Virtual Consumer

• Peter Lunt
• Department of Psychology
• University College London

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Research Projects

• Economic and Social Research Council UK (award
  number LI32251035) as part of the ESRC Research
  Programme The Virtual Society?
• European Commission for the ESPRIT project
  AIMEdia (Project number 26983)

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E-commerce research agenda

• Pre-empirical agenda
• the market effects of e-commerce
• privacy issues
• regulation
• diffusion
• This agenda writes out the study of the
  consumer
• The market is understood in terms of abstract
  idealisations of consumers
• Participation is understood in terms of
  distributions of technology in the population
• Privacy is understood in relation to principles
  of rights
• Regulation is understood in terms of policy tools.

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Research agenda ctnd

• The agenda issues in research questions of the
  following kind
• Will people be able to take control of
  information giving in online transactions?
• Which data are considered to be sensitive?
• Will consumers trust online merchants?
• Will concerns about security or lack of
  regulation de-motivate consumption online?

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The Virtual Consumer Peter Lunt, UCL

• The Virtual Consumer Project
• Focus on public reactions to e-commerce as an
  emerging phenomenon -- beyond access and
  evaluation
• Uses of Public
  Culture of
• technology understanding consumption
• E-commerce

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The Virtual Consumer Peter Lunt, UCL

• Project Methods
• 16 focus groups (August 1998)
• split by social grade and gender
• 42 user trials (Spring 1999)
• split by household type, computing experience
• national survey N 868 (Summer 1999)
• national quota sample

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The Virtual Consumer Peter Lunt, UCL

• Focus Group Results
• analysed using grounded theory
• identification of key concepts, grouping these
  into categories, writing a narrative of these
  codings
• lay theories of e-commerce
• broadly positive view of e-commerce
• modern, novel, new technology, inevitable
• caution about adoption
• costs, mismatch with shopping practice, security,
  service not ready (MS)
• disappointment with websites
• boring compared to computer games, product
  labels/categories
• missing experiential aspects of shopping
• impulse buying, being there -- with friends/family

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The Virtual Consumer Peter Lunt, UCL

• What was missing from these accounts?
• Little concern over privacy issues
• privacy collapsed into security,
• lack of interest in alternative or information
  sites
• Little awareness of technical/marketing
  developments
• data mining, agent software, personalised
  marketing
• Little explicit discourse of shopping practice
• People tend to see shopping online by analogy to
  existing shopping arrangements

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The Virtual Consumer Peter Lunt, UCL

• User Trial Results
• shopping structures household activities and
  obligations -- not just transaction -- how does
  e-commerce fit in?
• when technical developments discussed people
  tended to think in terms of warehousing data
  rather than dynamic use of profile and aggregate
  data through analysis
• inappropriate location of computer within the
  home -- study, childs room, living room -- not
  Kitchen
• more pressing issues in relation to technology
• access, relation to educational use, obsessive
  computing

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The Virtual Consumer Peter Lunt, UCL

• Survey Results
• 49 had Internet access
• 14 (122) reported having shopped online
• Only 3 people reporting regularly (weekly) use of
  e-commerce over a range of goods
• typically use was occasional (75) and restricted
  to 4 products or less (76)
• Reasons for caution ( rated as important)
• Cost of being online (58)
• delivery payments (49)
• not trusting Web with credit card details (51)
• dont want to give personal information (50)
• want to examine goods before purchase (60)

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The Virtual Consumer Peter Lunt, UCL

• Attitudes
• men more positive than women
• young more positive than old
• rich more positive than poor
• the more educated the more positive
• positive attitudes correlated with general
  acceptance of new technology and positive views
  about market effects of e-commerce

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The Virtual Consumer Peter Lunt, UCL

• What discriminates online shoppers from other
  Internet users?
• engagement with new technology
• shopping style
• non users have preference for local shops,
  bargain hunting, benign view of markets
• intentions
• e-shoppers -- CDs, tickets, software
• non-e-shoppers -- news services
• orientation to e-commerce
• less inclined to use agent software
• think governments should protect online consumers
• concerned with privacy
• want human contact when shopping

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The Virtual Consumer Peter Lunt, UCL

• Why are people only occasional online shoppers?
• not excited by technical developments
• do not believe market will lead companies to look
  after customers
• would miss the fun of real shopping
• think online payments insecure
• think goods are available locally
• are less positive about technical developments
  (agent software, data mining, personalisation)

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The Virtual Consumer Peter Lunt, UCL

• Conclusions
• generally positive attitudes are balanced by a
  range of perceived barriers to e-commerce
• there is a preference for the reproduction of
  existing shopping arrangements online
• knowledge gaps in public understanding
• e-commerce is boring (lack of issue engagement)
• a resistant group of Internet users is
  discernible
• using e-commerce appears to depend more on
  peoples orientation to consumption than their
  attitudes towards technology