Overall, respondents do expect to increase WWW spending, but not at the pace anticipated in the past. Spending by female respondents lagged the rest of the sample. Remarkably , the relative importance of vendor characteristics is little changed , despite the rather large change in the sample of respondents, and other changes to the Web page on which these responses were elicited. Web vendors are perceived somewhat positively on this characteristic. Having the lowest price is least important.
Respondents are risk averse.
They rate vendor reliability and security of their financial information quite highly. Importantly, these are the two characteristics Web vendors are perceived as being at a competitive disadvantage. Given the newness of the medium, and of many of the online businesses themselves, it i s doubly important that vendors convince customers that orders can be canceled, refunds processed speedily, and quality after sales service provided as a matter of course. Raising the quality of the entire purchase process, not just getting the informati on out, must be the objective. Using links from others' pages to find new sites is very popular.