Effects of interaction richness on consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions in e-commerce: some experimental results

A variety of information and communication media have been employed to support the interaction of consumers with products and sales representatives in electronic-commerce (EC). But, the question of what impact those media have on consumers in EC has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the richness of consumers’ interaction with products and with sales representatives on changes in their attitude towards and their intention to use business-to-consumer (B2C) EC. Controlled lab experiments were conducted using two types of products and multiple levels of interaction richness. The results show that interaction richness has positive impact on consumers’ attitude towards B2C EC. Additionally, the study finds that the impact is stronger in the case of purchasing a high-complexity product than a low-complexity product, and that consumers’ attitude change is positively related with their intention to use B2C EC. Differential effects on two facets of attitude, ease of use in accomplishing the tasks and usefulness were observed leading to interesting implications and future research directions.