Abstract:

This paper describes the opinion of the Romanian online consumers about the products and the product traits that influence the buying process. Online, buyers take into consideration various factors before making the final decision. Some of the elements that have a greater influence in brick and mortar stores, such as touching, smelling, reading the label information, trying on or tasting are lacking from an online shopping experience: In some categories, the country of origin is important when making buying decisions. The lack of written works in this area motivated us to study consumers' opinion about the factors that determine a purchase in an online environment, but also the importance of country of origin traits that help the buyer create an image of the product. Therefore, we explored this subject with a qualitative research, involving 15 people that are frequent online shoppers and in the last month spent a minimum of 20 euro buying from online stores. The research has implications for consumers but also for online store managers.