Online Retail Forecasts and Research 2. With such a large jump, online retailers can expect a lot of competition for this revenue. In the GVU surveys cited above, inability to judge quality was one of the most frequently cited reasons why consumers did not make a purchase online. Judging the quality of a product is a critical element in the search and decision making process that leads a consumer to make a purchase. While the survey did not query further on which elements in judging quality were the most important, we hypothesize that physical touch would have been one of the most important cited and, thus, warrants analysis.
Human interaction can also be a part of the search and decision making process.
Real-time interaction with a sales person is a dynamic, easy, and comfortable means of communication that allows the consumer to get information on product quality and to compare product attributes with the help of a knowledgeable individual. Human interaction in online retailing also could include entertainment or social elements. In this paper, we hypothesize that as technologies are used to overcome these barriers, consumers will begin to adopt the Internet medium as a viable alternative to physical world retailing in some instances. The power of collaborative filtering or rules-based filtering to replicate elements of the physical world shopping experience is another potential remedy that is just beginning to be discovered. Problem Statement Online retailers can improve the adoption of consumer online purchasing by implementing methods and technologies that help fill in the gaps between the physical world shopping experience and the experience online.