Use Of Electronic Retail In The Republic Of Croatia

In the modern trade business the application of IT achievements has the great usage opportunities. Electronic commerce is a form of trade that includes commercial transactions that take place via electronic networks. The course of the sales process in the electronic commerce is almost identical to the conventional course of the sales process: initiative, business operations, contracting, product delivery and payment. There are numerous advantages of electronic commerce: a huge selection of products, time availability, lower product prices due to high competition, shopping convenience. However, electronic commerce has its disadvantages such as cultural differences in business between different countries, legislation, the inadequacy of some products for this form of shopping, doubts about the security of payment... Electronic retail or B2C (business to customer) is a computer store in which the entity aims at the ultimate consumer, whereat they notice a wide range of products and businesses engaged in trade new possibilities and advantages of this way of doing business. With the increasing number of Internet users in Croatia, the question is whether they use the electronic shopping and to what extent? A survey on the use of e-commerce in Croatia was conducted in three counties for the purposes of this paper: Zagreb, Vukovar-Srijem and Sibenik-Knin county for belonging to different regions, different levels of economic development as well as because of the different structure of their population. The study was conducted on 150 examinees, by means of a questionnaire with structured questions. The examined sample of this study will show the extent to which residents of the Republic of Croatia as the ultimate consumers of non-business consumption use electronic shopping, the reason why is not used, if they believe in the security of payment over the Internet, who the users of e-commerce according to demographic characteristics are, as well as differences in regional affiliation with regard to the use of electronic commerce, etc.