ABSTRACT
Digitization has fundamentally changed consumer experiences of shopping. From 2006 to 2011, the share of online shoppers in the EU increased from 27 per cent to 40 per cent of consumers (Eurostat 2011a, 2011b), which reflects the world average pretty well (MarketingCharts 2008). Both companies and consumers have benefitted from the opportunities offered by the Internet. Because of its bidirectional quality, the Internet facilitates communication between companies and consumers as well as between consumers (Godes et al. 2005). We can trace a number of changes that have flowed from the growth of the digital age (including in the classical stages of consumer behaviour: search, choice, acquisition/purchase, consumption and use, and disposal) and also developments. First, businesses benefit from consumers communicating with each other online through brand building effects, customer acquisition and retention, product development, and quality assurance (Dellarocas 2003). Other supply-side factors relate to quick information diffusion, expansion in communication channels and reduction in costs of using them and aggregation of interpersonal communication, for example, for market research purposes (Godes et al. 2005). Second, consumers have been increasingly empowered by inter alia easy access to information and ease of price comparison. The Internet facilitates co-creation of products and services including e-services and in the face of these challenges from an informed consumer, companies have had to move towards innovative collaborations with their customers, incorporating customers’ expertise, knowledge and creativity, for instance, in product design and testing (Prandelli et al. 2008). Other developments briefly include different ways of communicating with and reaching
consumers, varying channels of distribution, different consumer responses to shopping, and different patterns of consumer purchasing depending on the product category. One such development is belonging to virtual communities, which can become a driver for online shopping (Parsons 2002) and subsequently affects consumers’ virtual social identities (Wood and Solomon 2009).
