Explaining Young Consumers' Online Purchase Behavior under Risky Conditions: Perspectives from Mental Accounting

Abstract

As the internet becomes a new shopping channel, which threats traditional shopping, it also causes dramatic changes in consumer market. In the light of theories claiming that consumers act with limited rationality and make their preferences with the motive of avoiding loss, the main aim of this study is to measure the impact of loss variables on the consumers' decisions about online shopping in Turkey. The originality of this study is to categorise and analyse loss variables as 'the ones that happen in the process of shopping' and 'the ones that happen out of the process of shopping'. Following the literature stating that consumers tend to act irrationally, the study also concludes that consumers tend to be away from the economical rationality at a great extent under the loss conditions. The findings show that any type of loss either physically or mentally related to consumers' shopping has an effect on consumers' irrational behaviors. This study indicates that this effect is higher in the conditions of loss in the process of shopping than out of the process of shopping.