Exploring the Dimensions of Perceived Risk in using Internet for Purchase Decisions

Internet is one of the revolutionary technological innovations and B2C commerce is one of the notable applications of this innovation. When companies are trying to make commercial use of this innovation, there is still lot of resistance from the consumers. Any innovation is accepted by the consumer after the risk factor in it is removed which acts as a constraint in trying out the new innovation. It is the consumer perception which is responsible for formation of this constraint. One of the consumer perceptions is the perception towards risk. Consumer perception towards internet for purchase decisions is discussed in the current paper. Perceived Risk is an important dimension in consumer behaviour studied by Bauer (1960). The current study tries to explore this Perceived Risk dimension of consumer innovation perception towards using internet for making purchase decisions. There is always uncertainty in the outcome of using any new innovation. There is initial resistance by the consumers because of the risk factor involved in it. The current study tries to the understand this consumer perceived risk in using technology for making purchases. There were very few studies on the concept of perceived risk in Indian context which formed the main gap for the study.