Online Shopping

September 20th, 2008

Dear Respondent,

My name is Dr. Satyabhusan Dash, me and my doctoral student, Mr. Boudhayan Ganguly are undertaking a major research project at the Indian Institute of Management Lucknow. The project serves as the topic of Mr. Ganguly’s doctoral thesis. You have been selected as a potential participant for our research based on the nature of the sample required for the survey. In total, more than 500 online shoppers will be contacted and encouraged to participate in the study from various countries. To provide a specific focus to this research, we have chosen to analyze the drivers and consequences of online trust. If you have never personally done any online shopping, then please forward this questionnaire to a friend of yours who has done online shopping.

The survey is designed in five parts, which will take approximately 20 minutes to complete. The first section will ask you questions regarding your online shopping experience and product that you have purchased most frequently. In part two, we will ask questions about your shopping experience with your online store. In the third and fourth sections you shall be asked questions about your opinions and beliefs about online shopping and various aspects of life respectively. The fifth part will ask you a number of demographic questions that will allow us to categorize respondents into meaningful groups for statistical analysis.

You are under no obligation to participate in the study and are free to choose whether to answer any of the questions posed in the attached questionnaire. All of your responses shall be kept anonymous and only members of the research team will have access to your responses. Furthermore, all information extracted from the questionnaire and presented in written form will be aggregated so that no individual respondent is identifiable. Data collected for the study will be securely held for five years and then destroyed. We expect the final data to be collected by March 20, 2009. So that we meet the date, please check and submit your responses before 20th March 2009. If you wish to have a copy of the results or if you have any concerns regarding human ethics or issues related to your rights as a research participant then please contact me directly by at [email protected]. Thank you in advance for your assistance in our research project.

Sincerely

Dr. Satyabhusan Dash, Ph.D

Sweepstakes

Thank you in anticipation of your timely response. Everyone who will complete the questionnaire fully by 20th of March 2009 shall be included in a lucky draw for the following prizes. The winners shall be randomly chosen from the list of participants who have successfully completed their surveys.