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The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast two types of shopping aids, that is, research‐supporting and solution‐oriented shopping aids, and examine their effectiveness, considering both consumer and situational factors.

Expanded selection and additional detailed information are chosen to illustrate research‐supporting shopping aids, and personalized product recommendations and product ratings are used as examples of solution‐oriented shopping aids. This conceptual paper proposes that usage of shopping aids has an effect on the purchase likelihood and decision satisfaction and focuses on studying the moderating role of consumer product knowledge and time pressure. The thesis is that congruence between the type of a shopping aid and consumer characteristics, such as product knowledge, or situational characteristics, such as time pressure, should enhance the effectiveness of shopping aids.

The research propositions in this paper delineate how the use of retail shopping aids should affect the consumer's purchase likelihood, decision satisfaction, decision confidence, and evaluation costs, under the moderating influence of product knowledge and time pressure. Overall, knowledgeable consumers and less time‐pressed consumers should benefit from research‐supporting shopping aids (i.e. expanded selection and additional product information), whereas novice consumers and time‐pressed consumers should benefit from solution‐oriented shopping aids (i.e. personalized product recommendation and product ratings).

Retail shopping aids are designed to offer sales assistance for consumers to handle the obstacles to purchase completion. However, past efforts to install retail shopping aids have seen mixed results. This conceptual paper advocates that consideration of consumer characteristics and situational factors is necessary to understand the effects of shopping aid usage. This paper thus contributes to the understanding of solutions to purchase decision deferral and the determinants of decision satisfaction, and has practical implications for retailers regarding providing retail shopping aids to facilitate purchase completion and shopping experiences.

Healthcare is becoming an important part of people's online content consumption, with people searching for information on diseases or medical problems, treatments or procedures, particular doctors or hospitals, or about parking. This paper aims to investigate what users deem essential on patient‐oriented interactive e‐health tools on hospital web sites.

The findings are based on 242 patients/users from diverse backgrounds in a purposive sample. A modified Delphi technique was used in two rounds of survey to collect and analyze data.

The respondents highly desire core‐business tools, especially access to medical records and lab results, while discounting hospitals' efforts to connect to social media. Hospitals' e‐health implementation on their web sites has greatly lagged behind the users' needs for interacting with hospitals online. It is concluded that, while continuing to provide traditional functional tools, hospitals should expedite their development in providing core e‐business tools and emerging functional tools in order to accomplish multiple objectives, including service, education, and marketing.

Hospitals' e‐health development efforts have been behind the users' expectations at large. Future research should explore whether such lagging has resulted mainly from the lack of technical know‐how, lack of funding, and/or lack of vision on the administrative level.

The paper provides solid empirical evidence for US hospitals to (re)consider how to prioritize their efforts in implementing e‐health online so as to build a user‐centric web site.

Most US hospitals have implemented some form of e‐health online to serve their patients/users, but rarely have researchers studied such efforts. As a result, hospitals have had little evidence to gauge their implementation success. This is the first empirical study that investigates from the patient/user perspective the usefulness of various interactive e‐health tools online.