Technology and the Generation Gap: How E-Expertise Present in Youths Positively Affects Online Purchases

This cross-sectional study addresses Portuguese online shoppers’ behavior toward Chinese online retailers, assessing the impact of financial, product, and time-convenience risks and demographic traits on their willingness to buy from those e-stores. The research relies on a survey of 1,432 participants who have shopped online at least once. Approximately half of the sample already buys from Chinese websites; age, financial, and time-convenience risks explain 21.5% of the variance of their purchase intention. On the other hand, participants who buy on Chinese websites present significantly lower values of all risks and the intention to buy from Chinese websites, possibly reflecting a satisfactory transaction experience. Furthermore, a generation gap is evident as younger people feel more confident in dealing intuitively with and solving online issues, giving them the confidence necessary to purchase online from Chinese e-stores – perhaps geographically and ideologically distant – but brought closer by e-expertise (online dexterity).