EXPERT ALERT

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Jeff Falk
713-348-6775
jfalk@rice.edu

Rice e-commerce expert available to comment on rise of online holiday shopping

HOUSTON – (Dec. 2, 2015) – In a sign of how quickly American shopping habits have changed, more people shopped online over the Black Friday weekend than in stores for the first time, according to National Retail Federation surveys.

Credit: thinkstockphotos.com/Rice University

Utpal Dholakia, the George R. Brown Professor of Marketing at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business and a consumer behavior and e-commerce expert, is available to comment on this development and the outlook for the remainder of the holiday shopping season.

Dholakia said that when it comes to online shopping, free and reliable delivery is becoming a must-have for consumers. Speed tends to be less important than selection, price and trustworthiness. “For many consumers, shipping speed does not matter much, and other criteria are far more important,” he said.

Dholakia’s areas of specialization include the psychology of consumer decision-making, particularly in online and mobile marketing environments.

To schedule an interview with Dholakia, contact Jeff Falk, associate director of national media relations at Rice, at jfalk@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.

Rice University has a VideoLink ReadyCam TV interview studio. ReadyCam is capable of transmitting broadcast-quality standard-definition and high-definition video directly to all news media organizations around the world 24/7.

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Follow the Jones Graduate School of Business on Twitter @ricemba.

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Related materials:

Dholakia bio: http://business.rice.edu/Utpal_Dholakia.

Jones Graduate School of Business: http://business.rice.edu