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E-commerce is generally defined as conducting business through the use of the Internet. The rise of gigantic e-commerce sites, such as eBay and Amazon, shows that online shopping proves to be a strong alternative in business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer commercial activities, especially in the last decade. The term ‘online shopping’ is a part of e-commerce and refers to purchasing of products and services using the Internet. Today, companies shifting reluctantly to e-commerce activities and being present in the digital world is recommended not only as an advantage in competition but also as a requirement (Laudon & Laudon, 2016).
As online shopping is becoming more common in society (Criteo, 2015), the reasons and the advantages of using the Internet in commercial activities are highlighted in different studies. Today, the available literature provides studies on conceptual discussions and reviews (Ahmad & Khan, 2015) and (Obadă, 2013); for descriptive surveys (Hassan, Tretiakov, Whiddett, & Adon, 2014) and for modeling of the relationship between individuals’ behavioral attributes and the actual usage of online shopping, (Al-Alawi & Al-Ali, 2015) and (Al-Bakri & Katsioloudes, 2015). Most of these studies use a global approach and use a sample of special groups such as industry, academia and professionals. Available literature generally focuses on exploring the factors of actual usage of online commerce in general and does not pay much attention to the distinction for underlying reasons of individuals’ supportive and deterrent behaviors against commercial usage of online media. Additionally, the number, nature and relative importance of factors affecting e-commerce adoption may vary depending on business conditions and circumstances in different countries (Al-Bakri & Katsioloudes, 2015). Moreover, the complexity of the area is even amplified with consideration of differences between societies (Çelik, 2011), and the accelerated changes in the technology requires further research in time to see effective internal and external changes in online consumer behaviors for industry, government, consumers and academics (Al-Alawi & Al-Ali, 2015; Obadă, 2013).
For these reasons, this study focuses on citizens’ attitudes towards virtual shopping places and aims to research the supportive (positive drivers) and deterrent (negative drivers) factors in selecting online shopping alternative. The adopted research model was developed according to the purpose of this study and based on factors selected from the literature.
Internet purchasing has been developed and better established in countries providing developed infrastructure for commercial activities over the Internet (Jamil & Mat, 2011) and most of the available literature are either from Western or Far Eastern countries. Compared to the Internet potential of developed countries, the growth of the actual number of Internet users and their online purchasing activities is relatively low in developing countries. Consequently, the online commerce literature is immature and there is a clear need for detailed exploration of electronic markets from different perspectives in developing countries (Jamil & Mat, 2011). On the other hand, studies have shown that online shopping behavior may show entirely different patterns for different groups and countries due to the differences in understanding the subject knowledge, technical skills, efficiency of available business models, sufficiency of information sources and available infrastructure (Jin, Drozdenko, & Bassett, 2007). This means opportunities and circumstances to access and use information and communication technologies have an important influence on the use of online purchasing; therefore, findings may show significant differences from one case to another. With this backdrop, the research was based on the data collected in Turkey.