Abstract:

The new communication technologies and, in particular, the Internet revolution have presented the new market environments and processes called virtual markets. The objective of this study is to analyze consumers’ perceptions and practical behaviors of online shopping in the relevant virtual markets. There are three objectives of this work. These are to distinguish consumers with online shopping experience from consumers who do not shop online according to demographic characteristics, identify the risks and benefits that traditional and online consumers perceive in online shopping, and ultimately identify situations that will increase the likelihood of consumers who do not have online shopping experience to shop online. The data was obtained by the face-to-face survey method and was applied to 336 individuals. According to the findings obtained, there are significant differences between demographic characteristics, detected risks and benefits between consumers with online shopping experience and consumers shopping by traditional methods.

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