THE USAGE OF E-COMMERCE IN THE AREA OF EVROS, GREECE

• Main Authors: Elpida TENIDOU, Dimosthenis PAPPAS, Ioannis KAZANIDIS, Stavros VALSAMIDIS
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Publishing house of University of Pitesti, Romania 2016-11-01
• Series: Buletin ştiinţific: Universitatea din Piteşti. Seria Ştiinţe Economice
• Subjects: TAM; e-commerce; factors; Evros
• Online Access: http://economic.upit.ro/repec/pdf/2016_2_1.pdf
• ISSN: 1583-1809; 2344-4908

The use of technological applications is directly influenced by the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of technology according to the Technology Acceptance Model. In e-commerce applications, the ease or not someone understands how the electronic purchase process works can act positively or as a deterrent, to buy or not. Also, someone is positively influenced by the perceived relative advantage when s/he considers the electronic purchase, and negatively by the complexity perceived on the online purchase process. Certainly, the price and quality are still key factors in making purchases, as in traditional commerce. Evros is an area located in an important geographical area in northeast Greece, in the borders with Bulgaria and Turkey. It is a path for the trade among the three countries. In such a new trade area, there are a lot of issues to be addressed with regard to the consumer's purchasing behaviour. For residents of border areas, a lot of factors appear to be involved that may affect the user to carry out or not, an e-commerce purchase. The study aims to empirically investigate how factors such as gender, age, educational level, culture, nationality, Internet access, familiarity with technology, price, ease of purchase, risk, trust and security of the website, design of the site, services it offers, past experience and the name and reputation of the e-shop, affect the consumers, residents of this outermost geographical area. The survey was conducted by interviewing 200 people, residents of Evros. The findings are interesting and show that the factors affecting the purchase are gender, level of education and income. Although, the study suffers from a limitation in that it uses a convenience sampling technique without a fully matched profile of the respondents, it could be a basis of a reliable comparison for future research. The major contribution of this study is that it is the first attempt to investigate the impact of the aforementioned factors to the e-commerce in this part of Europe.