| Summary: | This research emerged with the intent to study the barriers for B2C e-commerce adoption in Portugal which still relevant today, highlighting the obstacles that have been less exploited by previous researches: the impact of offline shopping pleasure and the influence of the distance to shopping malls and city centers on online shopping intent. In order to research these topics, an online survey was conducted targeting 288 Portuguese e-shoppers and non-shoppers, where the constructs regarding context, individual, channel and product barriers that may be preventing online commerce to thrive in the country were highlighted. A multivariate OLS hierarchical regression was used to analyze the models proposed regarding intention to buy online and number of items purchased. The research revealed that customer satisfaction is a strong predictor of intention to buy online and that perceived product risk remains a barrier of e-commerce, since it impacts negatively the intention to buy online and the number of items purchased. It also showed that recreational shoppers that enjoy hunting for bargains in brick-and-mortar stores are willing to purchase more on the internet, showing that recreational shoppers are more “multi-channel”. Concerning spatial variables, people living 45 minutes or more walking from the city-center retail area have less intention to buy online than people who live only 10 minutes away or less, confirming that consumers living in high urbanized areas and closely to city centers have more propensity to buy online. This study provides useful information regarding the impact of context, cultural, product and individual barriers, noticing that even with the effort of companies to overcome some inhibitors, there is still much to do and companies embracing a multichannel strategy are best suited for success.
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