Shopping from a List: International Studies of Consumer Online Experiences

In response to the growth of online shopping, consumer groups from around the world participated in two mystery shopping exercises. These exercises, conducted during the Christmas holiday seasons or 1998 and 2000, involved buying a variety of products from web sites located both domestically and abroad. A number of serious problems were identified within the research, especially lack of disclosure of key consumer information and failures in delivering goods and refunding consumers when goods were returned. The research has been used by consumer organizations to enhance consumer education and to lobby governmental and self-regulatory bodies for greater consumer protection in the online environment. By the end of 1997, business-to-consumer ("B2C") electronic commerce had become a legitimate retail channel. At that time, 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada had purchased something via the Web, spending more than $2 billion (The Emerging Digital Economy 1998). In addition, millions of consumers had used the Internet to gather information about products but then made their purchases offline. 1998 was expected to show continued growth, capped off by the Christmas holiday season. Experts predicted that consumers would spend $3-5 billion dollars over the Internet during the final quarter of 1998 (Weaver, 1998), and this amount turned out to be an underestimate ("Online Holiday Shopping." 1999). Even Martha Stewart, the matron of homemade goods and refined taste, appeared on the cover of the December 7, 1998 issue of Newsweek to announce: "Christmas Goes Online. " It was in the context of the exuberant growth of B2C electronic commerce that consumer organizations began contemplating the promise and potential pitfalls of online shopping. Would it obliterate national borders and open up a world of convenience, choice, and savings? To find out, Consumers International (the London-based umbrella organization for the world's consumer organizations) coordinated a multi-country study of consumer experiences when buying over the Internet, both within and across national borders (Scribbins, 1999). A follow-up study was conducted in 2000 (Scribbins, 2001). The purpose of this article is to report the findings of these two studies and discuss their implications for consumer education, consumer protection, and consumer research. THE 1998 STUDY Methodology To launch the initial study, researchers from eleven countries were given a list of eight products and asked to buy each product twice, once from a domestic web site and once from a site based in another country. The idea was very simple, but no one else had conducted such a mystery shopping exercise. The shopping was conducted primarily during December 1998, a busy time for electronic retailers. On the one hand, the study examines their behavior under stressful conditions. On the other, the Christmas season is the time when a large percentage of online purchases are made. Sites were supposed to be selected in a way that would mimic the average online consumer and were selected by using search engines or popular portals such as Yahoo. To avoid duplication of the best known sites (e.g., amazon.com or llbean.com), researchers were asked to submit their list of intended sites for review before starting to shop. The eight items purchased were a dictionary, a doll, a pair of jeans, a portable hairdryer, a computer software game, a bottle of champagne or other alcoholic beverage, chocolates or a food basket, and computer RAM. For each purchase, the researcher was supposed to track his/her experience from the point of selecting a site from which to buy, through placing an order, receiving it, returning the item (where feasible), and waiting for payment to be refunded. Data were eventually collected from 151 sites based in 17 countries. The 11 participating countries were Australia, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Japan, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. …