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1. Introduction
15 years ago, Alba et al. (1997) predicted that online shopping would inevitably cannibalise offline shopping, except for experience products. Despite this prediction, 41 per cent of European internet users have yet to buy or even order products and services online (Seybert, 2012). Most researchers ascribe the reluctance of internet users to switch to online shopping to their distrust of e-tailers or, as a corollary (Mitchell, 1999), the greater perceived risk factors associated with online shopping (Ko et al., 2004; Eggert, 2006; Kwon and Lennon, 2009): the upsurge in payment method fraud or personal information theft (phishing); lack of contact with sales staff and the difficulty in relying on item visualisation alone (Shim and Lee, 2011); uncertain delivery or product return conditions; and ever-fluctuating internet prices that may reinforce the financial risk of buying online (Ha and Coghill, 2008).
Uncertainty about the purchase process explains also why multichannel shoppers obtain information from the internet but prefer to shop in-store (Liang and Huang, 1998) or refuse to switch from the store to the website (Gupta et al., 2004). This array of issues puts merchant websites at a disadvantage compared to stores (San Martín and Camarero, 2009).
However, since the work of Biswas and Biswas (2004), Cunningham et al. (2005) and Eggert (2006), no other research has compared empirically online and in-store purchase risks. Moreover, most research on perceived risk looks at either the level of perceived risk or its impact on purchase attitudes, but rarely both. This relative gap in the scholarly literature is all the more unfortunate as perceived risk has long been used to explain shoppers’ decision to adopt a new distribution channel or stick to their usual channel (Lumpkin and Dunn, 1990). Since 80 per cent of retailers have now gone multichannel (Kilcourse and Rowen, 2008), they have much to gain from examining their website and stores in the light of perceived risk, with a view to better anticipating, preventing or encouraging customer switchover from one channel to the other (Reardon and McCorkle, 2002). For example, in a multichannel environment, the trust generated by a retailer’s stores can enhance confidence in its site and thus increase online shopping intentions (Hahn and Kim, 2009).
Accordingly, this research aims to answer...