The advent of a new phenomenon always brings about a certain amount of resistance. When products became available online for example, it took some time for many people to become accustomed to making their purchases over the Internet, and some have yet to do so.

However, for those of us who still opt to make our purchases in conventional brick-and-mortar stores, our unwillingness to make these same purchases online may not have anything to do with our unwillingness to adopt new technologies. The real reason may lie with the idea that we value our personal information greater than the money and time we save from shopping online.

Recently an acquaintance, whom we will call Darryl, decided to spend around $100 more for an item at a traditional store simply because the the online checkout form was “asking too many personal questions.” Now, we all know that a good portion of the data that we submit is used for market research and data analysis and that we can potentially be spammed by submitting data to the wrong destinations.  Not to mention the rare possibility that we may fall victim to identity theft.  We therefore decide that we’d be better off buying certain products in a store rather than buying them online.

This raises the question: how much of this is rational and how much is pure emotion? Presumably, if we go to a store, we might pay with a credit card, which has a great deal of information stored with it. We think nothing of using debit cards at gas stations, or using reward points or store cards, and we sometimes provide social security numbers when renting movies. Executing the same transactions online, however, can give us a feeling of less control as we are made fully aware of the information we’re giving away by filling out those purchase forms. - Was Darryl correct in paying more to purchase (by credit card) from a store?