A focus on online buyer-seller interactions

In this research, it is considered that an online shopping relationship can be observed and analysed as an online and collaborative decision, where at least a seller, a buyer and a website share information, knowledge, know-how, experience, competence and responsibilities. A survey, based on the case of wine shopping online, offers as evidence the crucial nature of socially mediated interactions in e-commerce, whether by telephone or e-mail. Six fundamental types of interactions in this context, together with their origins in terms of the levels of complexity and individual competence required on both sides, are also put forward. So, too, are the goals and forms of intervention and collaboration process in the online shopping relationship, and in the onlinebuying decision process.