ABSTRACT
The Internet has a fun side, and is capable of evoking feelings of joy, fun and curiosity. Consumer-related factors interact with product-related factors in determining the online purchase process and the use of the Internet. The chapter provides an empirical analysis of online shopping structured around two factors that appear to influence consumer purchase behaviour: the shopping orientation of consumers and product characteristics. It provides empirical evidence that considerations and relations appropriated for the physical world need to be reshaped when transposed to the electronic environment, and not merely 'copied and attached'. Electronic channel customers show a significantly less hedonic orientation toward the traditional brick-and-mortar shop; consumers who have never purchased through the web are those perceiving a high degree of hedonism in the traditional shopping environment. Hedonism and utilitarism exist also on the web: they display correlation patterns similar to those already known in the traditional brick-and-mortar world, but they are independent from it.
