The impact of psychic distance on purchasing decision-making process of Czech Generation Y while purchasing digital products

The aim of this thesis is to provide a first insight into a phenomenon of how perceived psychic distance influences a decision-making process when purchasing digital products. Since this area has not been sufficiently researched so far and therefore there is existence of literature gap, was within this thesis utilized a qualitative method of data collection, more precisely in-depth interviews. From the analysis of the data provided during these interviews, the influence of psychic distance on the decision-making process of the Czech millennials within the purchase of digital products was deduced. Based on this data, the effect of psychic distance seems to be significantly eliminated in comparison with a traditional offline environment or a purchase of physical products within the online environment. The interviews show that for Czech millennials the perceived psychic distance differs with the size of the financial commitment, the subjective preferences and the existence of positive references. Furthermore, factors that have a significant influence on the overall perceived psychic distance have been identified in this thesis. Such factors include, in particular, the language in which the digital product is provided, trust in the legislative environment and the perceived technological maturity of the country of origin of the digital product provider. It is necessary to emphasize that in order to generalize the results of the thesis further quantitative studies are needed to verify the validity of the results of this thesis.