Risk and Trust in Online Shopping: Experience from Nigeria

This paper attempts to examine and investigate online shopping in Nigeria considering perceived risk and trust among online shoppers and online vendors. Trust in the Internet world can be influenced by perceptions of the vendors. This study will place more emphasis on consumers trust in online vendors rather than trust in the infrastructure. This study argues that since online vendors are the consumer’s main focus when transacting online, trust is built based on perceptions of the vendors. Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of online shopping is also examined in this study know whether the Nigeria populace see a need for online shopping or even e-commerce. Some of the perceived risk identified includes risk are financial, product performance, social, psychological and time/ convenience loss. Primary source of data collection was employed in getting data for this study through administering of questionnaires. Respondents were selected from Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja, which are the major cities in Nigeria; there were 100 respondents in this research study. Correlation analysis was carried out to test for relationship between variables. Findings reveals that the presence of perceived risk negatively affects trust in online shopping and that perceived usefulness of online shopping has a positive effect on actual usage of online shopping. Keywords: E-Commerce, Economy, Consumer, Internet, Trust, Ris