Consumer Behavior in Online Shopping Abandonment
Summary
Online shopping abandonment remains a persistent challenge for e-retailers worldwide, with typical cart abandonment rates often exceeding 60 per cent. This behaviour can occur at multiple stages of the purchasing journey, from initial product selection to the final checkout screen, and is driven by an interplay of consumer motivations, emotional states and digital platform characteristics. Psychological antecedents include perceived risk, affective ambivalence and motivational conflicts, while technological factors such as site speed, security cues and usability can either encourage completion or trigger dropout. Contextual moderators—ranging from cultural norms and device type to timing of promotions—further shape the likelihood of finalising a purchase. Theoretical frameworks such as the stimulus–organism–response model and choice-overload theory have illuminated how environmental stimuli and internal states translate into behavioural outcomes. For practitioners, a nuanced understanding of antecedents, mediators and moderators underpins strategies such as personalised offers, streamlined checkouts and adaptive interface design. Recent advances in explainable artificial intelligence and session-level analytics promise deeper insights into individual decision pathways, yet there remains a pressing need for more integrative, globally representative research.
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Consumer Behavior in Online Shopping Abandonment publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in consumer behavior in online shopping abandonment across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Shopping cart abandonment: the act of leaving items in a virtual cart without completing the purchase.
Choice overload: a cognitive state in which an excess of options impedes decision-making.
Stimulus–Organism–Response model: a theoretical framework linking environmental stimuli, internal psychological states and behavioural outcomes.
Lexicometric analysis: a quantitative method for identifying patterns and themes within textual data.
References
- Electronic shopping cart abandonment: What do we know and where should we be heading?. Electronic Markets (2024).
- An Analysis of Consumer Purchase Behavior Following Cart Addition in E-Commerce Utilizing Explainable Artificial Intelligence. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research (2025).
- Prefer cheap or expensive products? Shopping stage matters. Frontiers in Psychology (2024).
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