Why customers abandon their online shopping carts

Obtaining a precise reason why customers abandon their online shopping cart is difficult. However, in the realm of online shopping it is a necessary question to take up and to explore. In a May 2008 press release, Paypal published results from its survey to consumers who did not complete a recent online transaction.

PayPal Survey Reveals Consumers’ Top Reasons for Abandoning Online Purchases

Unfortunately, a copy of the survey was not readily available for an evaluation of its construct,  methodological, and theoretical validity. FYI, when information like this is presented, it is important to know the demographic information from those in the sample. How were the participants recruited? Where were the participants recruited? How many participants were in this study? Was random sampling used to select participants? Were more men sampled than women? In what environment were the questions answered? Did the survey use a multiple choice format, a likert scale, or did the survey use a fill-in-the-blank format? How familiar was the survey participant with the concept of online shopping?

Assuming that Paypal published valid results, the press release gives several possible reasons why people abandon their online shopping carts:

43 percent of consumers didn’t pay for items in their shopping carts because shipping charges were too high

36 percent of purchasers didn’t pay for items because they felt the total cost of the purchase was more expensive than anticipated

27 percent of shoppers didn’t pay for items because they wanted to comparison shop at other Web sites before making a purchase

16 percent of consumers didn’t pay for items because they could not contact customer support to answer questions

14 percent of shoppers didn’t pay for items because they forgot their usernames and passwords for their store accounts created with the merchants

One possible explanation for the top two results, composing 79% of participants, has to deal with transparency and trust from the consumer’s point of view. When a potential consumer searches for a product online, he or she wants to know one essential question: how much is this going to cost? Since shipping is not factored in until the last stages of the transaction, high shipping cost can deter a potential customer from completing their transaction. I can imagine a consumer thinking, “Hey! This is more than what I was prepared to pay!” Perhaps online retailers can introduce an estimated shipping cost on the product page in order to prepare their potential customer that there will be additional charges for their item.

Amazon’s Super Saver Shipping is an attempt to capture this lost audience. When a customer’s shopping cart contains at least $25 worth of products of certain eligible items, Amazon.com ships the products for free. The key here is finding items meeting this criterion.

It is interesting to note that traditional shopping has something similar to shipping costs: sales tax. The advertised cost of an item does not include sales tax in most cases at traditional brick and mortar stores. While we all know that taxes are a “given,” we, as consumers, do not accept shipping costs as easily.