Americans curbed their shopping habits a little, says Princeton Survey Research. But should they?
According to USA Today, “24% of Americans stopped buying online”, while 56% have curbed their habits, due to recent security breaches at major retailers across the country.
The bold statement has been made after Princeton Survey research polled 790 Internet users, a quarter of whom reported to have gone “cold turkey” on online shopping, while 56% (of 790 Internet users), said to have curbed their online shopping habits.
Consumer confidence is a major economic influencer, and the immediate effect of a major news source, like USA Today, reporting as much as 24% of America jumping ship from buying online, is: USA Today readers thinking twice before making their next online purchase.
This is why it’s important to read between the lines of alarmist news reports using percentages instead of actual numbers.
About these security breaches
The focus of the poll was on online purchases, yet the latest and most astonishing, breaches resulting in actual consumer data compromise did not happen to internet purchases, but at physical points of sale such as Target and Michael's, as Bloomberg Businessweek reminds us with this article published in March this year: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-13/target-missed-alarms-in-epic-hack-of-credit-card-data.
The information suggests a higher likelihood of security-related issues happening at brick-and-mortar level, than online.
Logic dictates that in a high-tech heist scenario, the safest way for a computer pirate to compromise a system is to interact with it directly, hence by curbing the amount of traceable data.
In the attack against Target, pirates physically installed malware into the company Security and Payments system, which was designed to intercept credit card swipes across over 1,797 U.S. physical stores.
The security breach put stockholders and consumers on high alert, generating a massive number of lawsuits against the company.
While logic dictates one thing, mass psychology dictates the exact opposite, most of the times, and in this case, the natural inclination of most consumers to associate credit card fraud with online shopping did the rest.
So there you have it: in a modern twist to the classic game of “telephone”, the focus suddenly, and wrongly, shifts to online retailers, which translates into USA Today using vague and minute Princeton Survey Research data to illustrate how 24% of (790) people, are willing to give up online shopping, because they are “pretty much flipping out over recent security breaches”.
A realist look at online shopping:
Credit card fraud and identify theft can certainly happen at any time, and most often when consumer habits don’t include investing in anti-virus software, and following simple common sense rules of changing passwords on a routine basis.
The physical world of brick and mortar stores is just as hazardous, and they represent a much larger target for identity thieves than small on-line retailers.
You, the on-line shopper, are protected on-line. Most major credit cards with the Visa, MasterCard and American Express logo come with 0% liability promises ensuring no loss to the card holder for unauthorized purchases.
Having said that, putting a negative spin on online shopping to cause panic, is nothing short of irresponsible, as many brick and mortar retailers rely, in no small part, to online sales these days in great numbers.