ICTs and digital risk in purchase transactions

Abstract

The phenomenon of digital risk accompanies today's consumers every day, at the execution of every purchase transaction. Today's customers (so-called the Customers 4.0), who use ICTs on a large scale and are very prone to exploiting the potential of ICTs in purchasing processes, are usually aware of the digital risk, but do not give to it a high enough priority. In order to explore the peculiarity of the digital risk and customer use of ICTs, the CATI survey was conducted – on a sample of 320 consumers (from Poland). The research aimed to assess the complexity and importance of digital risk in customers' opinions, and the complexity of the use of ICTs in purchasing processes. The research process involved the statistical methods as follows: factor analysis (i.e. Principal Components Analysis method – PCA), as well as cluster analysis (k-mean method). In the study, three composite indexes were constructed – i.e. the Digital Risk Complexity Index – DRCI, the Digital Risk Importance Index – DRII, as well as the Consumers' Use of ICTs Complexity Index – CUICI. In particular, the study showed that the digital risk complexity is at a moderate level, the digital risk importance is at a moderate level too, as well as the consumers' use of ICTs complexity is at a relatively high level throughout the research sample.