THE INTERNET AND ITS USE IN PRE-PURCHASE STAGE IN EUROPE AND ASIA – MANAGEMENT OF MARKETING EFFORTS

The online shopping cannot be considered to be an emerging trend because it became a standard way of doing business. The focus of online retailers’s interest should be aimed to the customer behavior during purchasing process. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse use of the Internet in the pre-purchase stage in the selected countries from Europe and Asia. We found that there is a significant negative correlation between selected World Bank indicators (GDP per capita, The Internet users per 100 people) and use of the Internet in pre-purchase stage with use of Internet. Furthermore, there is a significant difference between European and Asian online consumers when using the Internet during pre-purchase stage in several observed activities.