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.     

The effects of national culture values on consumer acceptance of e-commerce: Online shoppers in China

E-commerce is now international, and thus national culture can affect the behavior of customers. But e-commerce studies related to national culture are limited. Our study explored the effect of national culture on consumer acceptance of e-commerce in China.     

Opinion evolution of online consumer reviews in the e-commerce environment

Online consumer reviews play an important role in shaping potential customers’ purchase decisions in e-commerce. Previous studies have analyzed the influence of online consumer reviews on sales, mainly considering factors such as reviewers’ and viewers’ profiles, information provided, and product features. However, there are relatively few studies that discuss how online consumer reviews interact with each other and how consumers’ opinions evolve over time. This paper proposes an opinion evolution dynamics model that is applicable to online consumer reviews in the e-commerce environment by taking into account influencing factors such as viewer reading limits, review sorting and releasing strategies, convergence parameters, review posting possibilities, and confidence thresholds. Using multi-agent simulation based on the proposed opinion evolution dynamics model, the paper discusses how these factors affect viewers’ opinions, and the opinion evolution process itself. Finally, conclusions and managerial implications of the simulation results are discussed.     

The effect of colors of e-commerce websites on consumer mood,memorization and buying intention

This paper aims at studying the effect of the colors of e-commerce websites on consumer mood, memorization and buying intention. On the basis of a literature review a conceptual model is proposed, showing the effects of the color of e-commerce websites and specifically of its components, hue and brightness on the behavioral responses of the consumer, memorization and buying intention. These responses are conveyed by mood. Data collection was carried out during a laboratory experiment in order to control for the measurement of the colored appearance of e-commerce websites. Participants visited one of the eight versions of a website designed for the research, selling music CDs. Data analysis using ANOVA, regressions and general linear models show a significant effect of color on memorization, conveyed by mood. The interaction of hue and brightness, using chromatic colors for the background and foreground supports memorization and buying intention, when contrast is based on low brightness. A negative mood infers better memorization but a decreasing buying intention. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

The software quality challenges of service oriented architectures in e-commerce

Web Services technologies and their supporting collection of de facto standards are now reaching the point of maturity where they are appearing in production software systems. Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) using Web Services as an enabling technology are also being discussed widely in the IT press. However, despite the numerous and real advantages of these architectural patterns there are still many software quality challenges that remain unresolved. This is particularly true as we consider more advanced architectures that exploit the technology to its maximum advantage: utility computing and on-demand service discovery and composition, grid computing and multi-agent systems will only become pervasive once the software quality challenges of real-world industrial applications have been addressed. In this paper potential quality issues such as performance, reliability and availability are addressed in terms of the quality assurances that might need to be provided to consumers of services. Proposed XML-based Service Level Agreement (SLA) languages are reviewed as a means of providing these quality assurances in machine-readable ways. We also discuss how SLAs might be automatically negotiated to enable automated, on-demand service discovery and composition. The next section of this paper addresses quality issues from a service provider's perspective. The providers of such services will need to ensure that SLA commitments are met and this poses interesting problems in terms of application management. Network quality of service is currently addressed through such means as IntServ and DiffServ. Research proposals to introduce similar techniques at an application level are described. From the service consumer's perspective, interesting research proposals for proactively ensuring that good quality of service is obtained are also reviewed. These could be particularly important for creating confidence, from a consumer's perspective, in these architectures. Finally, the paper evaluates the challenges and suggests areas where further research is most urgently required. Shelly Saunders MSc, BSc (Hons), MBCS (CITP) is an e-commerce Technical Architect, currently employed by ACE Group, a global insurance and reinsurance company. She is also studying part-time for a PhD with the Southampton Institute. She has 12 years experience in the software development industry and has provided the architecture for numerous e-commerce sites for global blue-chip clients. She also has another 5 years experience as a research scientist in the optical communications industry. She holds three patents. Margaret Ross is Professor of Software Quality at Southampton Solent University, She is an active member of the BCS, being on various Boards, Committees, and Working Parties including the BCS Council, the Quality Specialist Group (Vice Chair and Secretary); BCSWomen Specialist Group (Committee member) and the BCS Ethics Expert Panel. She is a Fellow of the BCS and also a Chartered Engineer and Chartered Scientist. Geoff Staples is the Chairman of the BCS Quality Specialist Group and a member of the BCS TickIT Committee. Geoff has been active in various aspects of computing, particularly quality. Geoff has been the Conference Chair or for the BCS Quality Specialist Groups international SQM and INSPIRE conferences are for many years. He is a Fellow of the BCS and Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and also a Chartered Engineer Sean Wellington leads the Communications Engineering Subject Group (CESG) within the Faculty of Technology at Southampton Solent University. The group is responsible for programmes in computer systems and networks, web design, media technology and electronic engineering. Sean has a wide range of academic and research interests, including digital signal processing and multisensor fusion. He is an active member of the Institution of Electrical Engineering (Member 1993, Fellow 2002) and has served on numerous boards and committees.     

An e-commerce performance assessment model: Its development and an initial test on e-commerce applications in the retail sector of China

We developed a performance assessment model for e-commerce; it included indicators, indicator weights, and evaluation methods. The model has seven methods of assessing e-commerce performance and uses four criteria to compare and select the appropriate one for a particular situation. This model was tested in the retail sector of China. According to the data collected from 70 Chinese retailers, 16 indicators of e-commerce performance consisted of four constructs: marketing and sales, customer service, supply chain efficiency, and financial performance. The indicators for those constructs provide a comprehensive measurement of performance. Then weights were assigned for each indicator using a majority aggregation method. Comparison of the results from seven evaluation methods showed that discordance analysis and simple additive weighting were the best evaluation methods for the enterprises we had sampled.     

群组聊天业务在IMS客户端的设计与实现

为了满足用户对IMS客户端群组聊天业务的迫切需求,根据最新SIMPLEIM标准中对群组聊天业务的定义,分析了群组操作和群会话操作,在客户端的体系架构上添加群组聊天组件,设计了针对预定义群组和临时群组的两个管理器,并特别针对群组初始化中的问题给以讨论,最后在SIPHello IMS客户端上实现了此业务。测试阶段,设计若干项目用于测试,结果表明,群组聊天业务能够成功运行在SIPHello IMS客户端上,拥有一定的稳定性。     

Examining the impact of intangible product features and e-commerce institutional mechanics on consumer trust and repurchase intention

The present study examines virtual try-on technology (VTO), return policies, pay-on-delivery (POD) mode of payment, vendor-specific guarantees, and free shipping policy of online retailers as antecedents of trust. The study also examines the role of perceived effectiveness of e-commerce institutional mechanisms (PEEIM) as a moderator between repurchase intention and trust. Data were collected through an online survey. The link to the questionnaire for the online survey was shared on different social media platforms and social networking sites. A total of 614 responses were considered for the study. Results revealed that return policies, POD mode of payment, free shipping policy, and VTO technology emerged significant predictors of trust. Surprisingly, vendor-specific guarantee had a negative relationship with trust. Trust, in turn, influenced repurchase intention. Considering the trust and survey responses, the results confirmed that PEEIM negatively moderates the relationship between trust and repurchase intention. This study contributes to the literature by empirically validating the impact of return policies, VTO technology, POD mode of payment, free shipping policies, and vendor-specific guarantees on trust. Most of these constructs have been analyzed as solitary constructs. In this study, the impact of these constructs is measured collectively, thereby indicating their importance as compared with other policies implemented by an online retailer. This is a first-of-its-kind study that validates the policies of online retailers in the Indian context.

     

Adopting television as a new channel for e-commerce. The influence of interactive technologies on consumer behavior

The aim of this research is twofold. Firstly, it analyzes how the two main features of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), interactivity and personalization, influence both customers’ perceived performance and involvement with a web-based information service. Secondly, it studies whether personalization and interactivity improve customer purchase intentions of this service through IPTV. We developed a 2×2 between-subjects factorial design and applied MANOVA analyses. Findings verify that interactivity and personalization foster customer involvement with the service, perceived performance of IPTV and purchase intentions. Moreover, interactivity promotes the effect of personalization on perceived performance and customer involvement. This research concludes that customers’ involvement and purchase behavior are not derived exclusively from their relationship with the firm, but also from connections established in the channel with other customers. Customers also appreciate participating in the service provision process, so firms should promote personalization activities during the purchase in order to improve customers’ performance evaluation.     

The effects of prior experience on the use of consumer products

Many products today are laden with a host of features which, for the majority of users, remain unused and often obscure the use of the simple features of use for which the product was devised (Norman in The design of everyday things. Basic Books, 2002; Keates and Clarkson in Countering design exclusion—an introduction to inclusive design. Springer, 2004). Since the cognitive capabilities of the marketed target group are largely not affected by age-related impairment, the intellectual demands of such products are frequently high (Rabbitt in Quart J Exp Psychol 46A(3):385–434, 1993). In addition, the age and technology generation of a product user will colour their expectations of the product interface and affect the range of skills they have available (Docampo in Technology generations handling complex User Interfaces. Ph. D. thesis, 2001). This paper addresses the issue of what features of products make them easy or difficult to learn to use, for the wider population as well as the older user, and whether and in what way individual prior experience affect the learning and use of a product design. To achieve the above, the interactions of users of varying ages and capabilities with two different everyday products were recorded in detail as they performed set tasks. Retrospective verbal protocols were then analysed using a category scheme based on an analysis of types of learning and cognition errors. This data was then compared with users’ performance on individual detailed experience questionnaires and a number of tests of general and specific cognitive capabilities. The principal finding was that similarity of prior experience to the usage situation was the main determinant of performance, although there was also some evidence for a gradual, age-related capability decline. Users of all ages adopted a means-end or trial and error interaction when faced with unfamiliar elements of the interaction. There was a strong technology generation effect such that older users were reluctant or unable to complete the required tasks for a digital camera.     

Effects of face-to-face versus chat communication on performance in a collaborative inquiry modeling task

In many contemporary collaborative inquiry learning environments, chat is being used as a means for communication. Still, it remains an open issue whether chat communication is an appropriate means to support the deep reasoning process students need to perform in such environments. Purpose of the present study was to compare the impact of chat versus face-to-face communication on performance within a collaborative computer-supported modeling task. 44 Students from 11th-grade pre-university education, working in dyads, were observed during modeling. Dyads communicated either face-to-face or through a chat tool. Students’ reasoning during modeling was assessed by analyzing verbal protocols. In addition, we assessed the quality of student-built models. Results show that while model quality scores did not differ across both conditions, students communicating through chat compressed their interactions resulting in less time spent on surface reasoning, whereas students who communicated face-to-face spent significantly more time on surface reasoning.     

The classification and strategic management of services in e-commerce: Development of service taxonomy based on customer perception

Previous studies have failed to take into account of the service sector, which accounts for a large portion of e-commerce transactions these days. To overcome the limitation, this research focuses on online service offers and attempts to develop their taxonomy. For the purpose, online services were identified from Korean Portal Sites and classified by 11 variables representing customer perceptions about service characteristics in the e-commerce context. Data for the analysis were obtained from a survey and the data-mining techniques and statistical processes including factor analysis, clustering and ANOVA were used. As a result, online services were classified into six groups – mass, professional, intellectual, credit, supporting and facility services and the distinctive features of each group were examined and strategies for marketing and operations recommended. By understanding the unique characteristics of each service group, managers can implement more suitable strategies, foster more positive attitudes towards online transactions, and finally increase online buying intentions.     

FPGA与DSP的双向数据通信在LTE中的应用研究

TD-LTE系统中,为了满足对算法处理速度的要求,采用了基于DSP+FPGA的硬件平台实现方案。方案中DSP芯片配置FPGA,由FPGA实现系统的时序控制,而TD-LTE系统中算法由DSP与FPGA共同实现,可以充分发挥两种芯片的优势,达到系统性能的最优化。为解决DSP与FPGA之间高速数据通信,基于TMS6455系列DSP芯片与Virtex6系列FPGA芯片,设计了一种DSP与FPGA进行双向数据通信的方案。板级联合调试的结果表明,该方案具有较高的可行性和通用性。     

The effects of long-term VDT usage on the nature and incidence of asthenopic symptoms

An opportunity arose in 1985 to become involved in a transition of working practice from hard copy to VDT. Over a two-year period, 161 VDT users and 65 control subjects in the same office environment were regularly and routinely examined for symptoms of asthenopia. The analysis of data shows that there are no significant differences in type, number and frequency of the work-related symptoms between VDT users and non-VDT users. It appears that reporting of symptoms within the group may be random, although certain symptoms do appear more frequently than others. Additionally, it appears that there is a significant difference between male and female users in the frequency of symptom reporting.     

The effects of usability and web design attributes on user preference for e-commerce web sites

This study examines the relationships among perceived usability before actual use, task completion time, and preference, and the effects of design attributes on user preference for e-commerce web sites. Nine online bookstore web sites were used by ten participants. Results indicate: (1) pre-use usability and task completion time were correlated; (2) the relationship between pre-use usability and preference was greater than that of task completion time and preference; (3) design attribute assessments after actual use were highly intercorrelated; and (4) organizational structure and layout had a greater effect on user preference than aesthetic aspects, such as color and typography. These findings can be used to construct a conceptual framework for understanding user preferences and to develop design guidelines to yield more highly preferred e-commerce web sites. Also, the methodology in this study can be applied to other computerized-applications.     

Gratifications and social network service usage: The mediating role of online experience

This paper incorporates dual theories from communication research (uses and gratifications) and psychology research (online flow) to examine consumer behavior in the use of social network services. In particular, the study proposes that consumers’ online experience of interaction and arousal serves as the mediator of the relationship between social motivations and use behaviors. The empirical results indicate that arousal fully mediates the relationship between social gratifications and problematic social network service use. Furthermore, both interaction and arousal are partial mediators of the relationship between social gratifications and the intention to revisit social networking websites.     

The moderating effects of gender on e-commerce systems adoption factors: An empirical investigation

For e-commerce designers and human–computer interaction researchers, electronic commerce (e-commerce) systems adoption factors and the moderating effects of gender are important topics. Even though there are research endeavors to explain e-commerce systems adoption, one of the main questions to be answered is regarding the normative and affective factors based on the theory of reasoned action and self-determination theory. In this paper, social norms, perceived enjoyment, and their relationships to intention to adopt an e-commerce system are tested (n = 322). Furthermore, the moderating effects of gender are tested based on the sociolinguistic literature. As expected, the influence of social norms is stronger in the female group while the influence of enjoyment is stronger in the male group. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the paper.     

The effect of EDI on market channel relationships in retailing

Many of the economic advantages of using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) result from improved relationships between business trading partners. This study develops and tests a model explaining the effects of EDI on three structural variables of inter-organizational relationships: channel intensity, formalization and information quality. The model also includes the effects of these structural variables on cooperation and conflict between trading partners, and on satisfaction and performance in a marketing channel. The model is based on Van de Ven and Ferry's theory of inter-organizational relations and the literature on marketing channels. Responses from 97 retail companies to a mail survey indicated support for the effects of EDI use on channel intensity and formalization but not on channel information quality. Moreover, intensity and formalization were positively related to channel cooperation but not to conflict. Channel performance was positively related to channel cooperation and negatively related to channel conflict. These findings suggest that EDI use improves cooperation between trading partners and leads to greater satisfaction and performance in electronically-mediated business transactions.     

Drivers and effects of post-implementation learning on ERP usage

Many organizations adopting enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are failing to achieve their anticipated business goals, the major reason being system under-utilization. It is imperative to understand the way users learn to use ERP systems effectively. This is especially important given the integrated and complex nature of the ERP system, which forces users to continually learn new skills after implementation. This study aims to explore the role played by post-implementation learning in ERP usage. Moreover, we identify social capital and post-training self-efficacy as antecedents to post-implementation learning. A survey method was employed to collect data from 659 ERP users. This study finds that post-implementation learning contributes to ERP usage, and that social capital and post-training self-efficacy are important antecedents to post-implementation learning. Our findings provide academics and practitioners with an understanding of how post-implementation learning can be manipulated to improve ERP usage.