JOURNAL OF SECURITY AND SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES ISSN 2029-7017 print/ISSN 2029-7025 online 2019 March Volume 8 Number 3 http://doi.org/10.9770/jssi.2019.8.3(9) THE IMPORTANCE OF SECURITY ASPECTS IN CONSUMER PREFERENCES IN ELECTRONIC ENVIRONMENT Vida Davidavičienė¹, Jurgita Raudeliūnienė², Manuela Tvaronavičienė 3 , Justinas Kaušinis 4 1,2,3,4 Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Sauletekio al. 11, Vilnius, Lithuania E-mails: 1 vida.davidaviciene@vgtu.lt; 2 jurgita.raudeliuniene@vgtu.lt; 3 manuela.tvaronaviciene@vgtu.lt; 4 justinas.kausinis@stud.vgtu.lt Received 18 March 2018; accepted 10 December 2018; published 30 March 2019 Abstract. Organizations have to face both the opportunities that the technologies provide and the challenges that they create in the local or global market as the consumer behavior in the electronic environment is different from the behavior in an actual shop, therefore it is important to not only understand the changing needs of the customers, the factors that infuence their behavior but also to choose suitable strategies while trying to satisfy these needs taking in consideration security issues. For this reason, an important purpose of this study is to indicate the factors that determine the behavior of an e-shop customer by conducting a pilot study in Lithuania. The research identifed the key factors of consumer behavior in an e-shop. To establish factors determining the online shop customer preferences, fve factor groups were identifed on the basis of empirical research: product (service) characteristics, delivery, methods of payment, service quality and web page functionality characteristics. The results of the structured consumer survey showed that the factors that positively infuence the decision to buy goods online are lower cost, less time consumption, an ability to make an order at any time of the day, and a larger range of products. The key factors that negatively affect the online shopping are product quality, delivery costs, security aspects, delivery time, and complicated online shopping process. The main problem areas faced by online shoppers were delays in product delivery, product quality, insuffcient choice of payment methods, diffcult return procedures, too little information about the product. After performing the correlation regression analysis of the structured survey, the following relationships are established: the frequency of online shopping is signifcantly correlated with the product’s compliance with expectations, which indicates that the customers who were satisfed with the quality of online products, more often shop on the Internet. Keywords: behavior; consumer behaviour; e-commerce; behavior infuencing factors; multiple criteria assessment Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Davidavičienė, V.; Raudeliūnienė, J.; Tvaronavičienė, M.; Kaušinis, J. 2019. The importance of security aspects in consumer preferences in electronic environment, Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues 8(3): 399-411. http://doi.org/10.9770/jssi.2019.8.3(9) JEL Classifcations: M1, M15, M16 1. Introduction In the context of global digitalization, various changes take place not only in organizational management structures and processes, but also in fundamental sciences, as the development and application of information technologies create preconditions not only for the emergence and exploitation of the opportunities in the global market but also create certain challenges in order to understand the rapidly changing needs of the users and factors infuencing the dynamics of these needs. Scientists differ in their assessment of the specifcs of user preferences in the electronic environment, the satisfaction of users’ needs and their behavior and the related issues of increasing e-commerce effciency. Taking into account the fact that the increasing use of the Internet in various felds has greatly expanded the possibilities and speed of access and use of information and, at the same time, has stimulated consumer engagement in a wide range of online activities (such as sharing their opinions on the product/service, providing feedback, comments, recommendations). Research on such issues becomes