Gender and Age as factors of Croatian Online Consumers

The aim of this paper is to investigate the purchasing behavior of Croatian consumers via the Internet. Digital commerce influences consumer behavior and greatly changes its decision-making process, and the last pandemic of Covid-19 additionally accelerated the acceptance of the digital online consumers’ intentions and habits. Companies that have online stores can build relationships with online customers and can treat their customers in the way they want and nurture the seller-buyer relationship as in the case of physical stores. E-commerce is one of the fastest-growing branches of the economy in Croatia, and all indicators suggest that this trend will continue. Therefore, it is of great importance to examine certain aspects of consumer behavior and habits during online shopping in the Republic of Croatia, which will be discussed in more detail in this paper.The paper seeks to investigate the online shopping habits among people with different age. The tasks aim to determine whether women use online shopping more than men and whether people over the age of 35 use online shopping less often compared to the younger population. The tasks are intended to prove whether Croatian customers show greater insecurity towards online shopping with increasing chronological age, for women and men.According to the obtained results, there is a difference in habits of online shopping based on the age of the respondents, and the chronological age is related to education, but also doubts about the safety of online shopping. The results obtained contrast with the results of previous research which found that more literate and technologically aware older people are more motivated to use online stores. Also, in previous research, it was found that women buy more online, which is not confirmed by this research. However, the results suggest that respondents show an equal preference for online shopping concerning gender