In marketing, perceived risk is a level of risk that exists from the customers’ point of view. Perceived risks impact consumers’ purchases and the decision to buy one product or service or another. Perceived risk theory also explains customer behaviors when they remain in the planning stage instead of subsequently moving to the action stage. From a marketing perspective, a positioning strategy may be used to address the problem of perceived risks and increase purchase involvement. In today’s rapidly developing world, online purchases are becoming widespread due to their simplicity and convenience. In this context, a vast range of scholarly articles explores perceived risks in terms of the virtual storefront.
Even though there are countless online stores, it is still not clear how perceived risks, online marketing, and customer trust are linked. In a recent study, Pappas states that marketing strategies influence the formation of perceived risks among online customers with regard to web-vendor quality risks. The author concludes that the theory has not yet been fully studied and therefore marketers should pay closer attention when applying it. According to Yang et al., such factors as perceived information asymmetry, service intangibility, and others affect customers’ acceptance of mobile payment. It should be emphasized that the theory has been found by Yang et al. to be quite useful for understanding and improving customer behaviors. If a company or a product has a pronounced selling style and a good reputation and is attentive to details, perceived risks would be low. Even though marketers try to address risks by providing warranties for their products or inviting endorsements from celebrities, perceived risks still need to be examined, both in theory and practice.