The Development of E-Commerce and Consumer Attitudes – A Comparative Analysis of Poland, Ukraine and Belarus

Abstract

Abstract Research background: Motivation for this paper is the rapid development of the electronic commerce sector and its increasing role as a sales channel. The level of e-commerce development is spatially diverse, both across continents and countries. As such, this study examined the conditions of electronic commerce development in the context of the specificity of e-consumers’ behavior in selected European countries. Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to compare the attitudes towards e-commerce among buyers from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus along with their activities directly related to online shopping. Research methodology: The paper focuses on the results of a study conducted in central and eastern European countries on a sample of nearly 1,000 respondents. The statistical tools used included the Kruskal-Wallis test and an independence analysis through SPSS v. 25 and Statistica v. 13.3. Results: The results showed that the country of origin is a variable differentiating both activities connected with shopping online undertaken by e-consumers and buyers’ attitudes towards e-commerce in the context of such aspects as: safety, convenience, time-consuming, possibilities of choice, ease and the economics of shopping. The predominant dependence between the country of origin of respondents and their inclination to use the Internet has not been confirmed. Novelty: The study contributes to the on-going and extremely current issue of the importance of e-commerce and the conditions of its development.