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In the context of a profound digital transformation, the need for social interactivity is becoming fundamental for consumers on e-commerce sites. It allows them to interact with the company in the same way as with salespeople in physical stores. Among the different existing virtual agents used by companies to offer online solid interaction, this study focuses on virtual recommendation agents (VRAs). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of VRA on consumers’ psychological states and online impulse buying.

An experimental website was designed for this study. After interacting with VRA, respondents had to take part in a survey. The questionnaire included measures of perception of the VRA, perceived enjoyment, online impulse buying and perceived risk. Structural equation modelling was used to test the research model.

The results confirm the positive influence of the VRA on perceived enjoyment, which is positively associated with online impulse buying. The effect of the VRA’s presence on perceived enjoyment is moderated by gender.

Only one product category was studied, for which the advice of VRAs is undoubtedly essential. However, this could also be valid for other products, such as technological products, where the consumer’s level of expertise may be low. Hence, the authors propose to extend this study to various products for a better generalization of the results.

This study provides practitioners with relevant findings on the efficiency of VRAs and offers them guidelines to design more interactive commercial websites with higher levels of social interactions. Such interactions should reduce perceived risks and make visitors more confident. This can encourage more traffic and sales, which implies growth in incomes and revenues.

Through this technology, VRAs can create more humanized links between consumers and companies.

Working on VRAs is original as they represent the technology that can replace salespeople. In addition, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to test the impact of VRA on online impulse buying. By examining the VRA’s set of fundamental capabilities, this study contributes to existing research on how companies should integrate digital technologies in their sales interactions with consumers, which to date has focused on other sales channels such as social media platforms.

Although graphic-based emoticons in mobile instant messenger (MIM) services became an important revenue source for their service provider, empirical research investigating factors influencing graphic-based emoticon purchase from the consumer's perspective is insufficient. The authors explore how user's achieved belongingness (acceptance or rejection) affects graphic based emoticon usage motivations and its purchase intentions.

A structural model is used to examine the relationship among individual's overall achieved belongingness, motivation factors of graphic-based emoticon usage in MIM such as perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, perceived enjoyment for others, social norm and emoticon purchase intentions. The authors collected and analyzed survey data of 279 Korean KakaoTalk users.

The analysis shows that perceived acceptance/inclusion positively impacts perceived usefulness, enjoyment and enjoyment of others in graphic-based emoticon usage. Meanwhile, perceived rejection/exclusion positively impacts perceived enjoyment and enjoyment of others but negatively influences perceived social norms. Moreover, social norms and perceived enjoyment directly affect graphic-based emoticon purchase intentions. The authors also find that perceived enjoyment of others and perceived social norms in a serial causal order mediate the relationship between perceived acceptance/inclusion (and rejection/exclusion) and emoticon purchase intentions.

Additional research including users from other demographic groups, such as other age groups, is required to generalize our findings and to increase external validity.

Unique implications related to the role of user's achieved belongingness and perceived enjoyment of others in graphic-based emoticon usage in purchase intentions are found.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/ 10.1108/OIR-02-2020-0036

Residing on social networking platforms, social games have unique characteristics distinguishing them from other digital games or online games. The purpose of this paper is to explore both social and gaming factors of social games and investigate their roles on enhancing perceived enjoyment. The authors also examine the relationships between perceived enjoyment, subject norm, perceived critical mass, intention to play, and actual behavior.

This paper develops a research model including nine hypotheses. Using a survey questionnaire, empirical data were collected from 169 actual social game players. Structured equation modeling was used to test the proposed research models.

Social identification, social interaction, and diversion significantly influence perceived enjoyment. Perceived enjoyment significantly influences the intention to play, which in turn significantly influences the actual behavior. Moreover, subject norm and perceived critical mass play different roles in determining the intention to play and the actual behavior.

The results of this study provide social game practitioners with a set of rich insights into guidelines on designing specific social and gaming characteristics to improve users’ perceived enjoyment and actual playing behavior.

Through analyzing characteristics of social games, The authors emphasize the difference between social games and other online games or computer games and recognize the enhancing role of social and gaming factors on perceived enjoyment. Findings of this study contribute to the literature on social games.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of individuals’ perceived enjoyment and output quality on their intention to play human computation games (HCGs) for location-based content sharing.

This study employed a cross-sectional survey method, and recruited 205 undergraduate and graduate students from a local university. Participants played the developed mobile HCG for content sharing named Seek, PLAy, SHare (SPLASH), and thereafter completed a questionnaire that measured their perceptions of enjoyment, output quality, and intention to play.

Results indicated that individuals derived enjoyment from the affective and cognitive dimensions, which further influenced their intention to play HCGs. Moreover, perceived output relevancy was significant in predicting individuals’ intention to play HCGs such as SPLASH.

The design of HCG is complicated due to their entertainment-output generation duality. Understanding what factors contribute to HCG usage is therefore, an essential area of study. Based on the study’s findings, designers should pay attention to HCG features that engender affective and cognitive experiences, and appropriately signify the relevancy aspect of HCG outputs.

Although similar in many ways, HCGs differ from entertainment-oriented games by generating output as byproducts of gameplay. Hence, results obtained from prior research in games may not be readily applicable to the HCG context, and further investigations are necessary. Moreover, the multidimensional aspect of HCG enjoyment and output quality, and how these dimensions influence usage intention has yet to be examined. The outcomes of this study can be exploited to drive further research in the field of HCGs, and similar games that are not just for pure entertainment.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the effects of interactivity and vividness on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment and their consequent impacts on consumer behavioral responses in a retail furniture VR store context. Considering the lack of VR empirical research, the indirect effect of interactivity and vividness on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment through telepresence and the moderating effect of consumer previous experience with VR are also included.

A commercial IKEA VR store was chosen for the study. Head-mounted display (HMD) VR headsets were employed for the VR shopping experience. The study was conducted at a laboratory at a large university in the southeastern United States. A total of 146 college students participated in the study.

Vividness had significant positive effects on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment, which in turn influenced attitude towards VR and behavioral intentions. Interactivity did not have positive impacts on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment. However, it indirectly affected perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment through telepresence. The findings also proved the moderating effect of consumer previous VR experience between interactivity and perceived usefulness and between interactivity and perceived enjoyment. The relationship between attitude and behavioral intentions was also positive.

Notwithstanding the benefits of VR in relation to its utilitarian, hedonic, and behavioral values, little is known about consumers' responses towards the usage of VR as a shopping tool. The present study can be considered as a starting point in understanding the usefulness of VR from consumer and managerial perspectives. The findings of VR indicated in the study will help practitioners understand the urgency of adopting VR in a retail setting.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into the determinants of the customers’ attitude and behavioural intention to use Internet banking services, paying special attention to the role of perceived risk, trust, enjoyment, website design and social influence.

A research model grounded on the technology acceptance model (TAM) reflecting the effects of trust, perceived risk, perceived enjoyment, perceived website design and social influence on TAM constructs is proposed. The structural equation modelling technique is used to analyse a sample of 697 individual Internet banking users in India through an online survey.

The results of data analysis confirm some of the hypotheses drawn from the literature. Consistent with some of the other studies, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, trust and perceived enjoyment are found to be immediate direct determinants of customers’ attitude towards using Internet banking. Attitude, perceived risk, perceived enjoyment and trust determine the customers’ behavioural intentions to use Internet banking. Although the direct effect of perceived website design is significant only on perceived ease of use, its indirect effects are significant on perceived usefulness, attitude and behavioural intentions. Furthermore, perceived enjoyment exerts both direct and indirect effects on perceived usefulness but exerts only direct effect on perceived ease of use.

Generalizability of the research is a practical limitation in consumer research studies and the present study is not an exception to that. The current study focused only on some technological, behavioural and attitudinal factors, and many customer-specific factors and other psychographic and behavioural factors such as cost, perceived value, service quality and satisfaction, which can provide more significant insight into the adoption process, are not a part of the scope of the study.

This research specifies the implications in three perspectives, viz., theoretical, methodological and managerial. Furthermore, this study provides the practical recommendations to enhance customer trust and guidelines to reduce perceived risk. The most significant implication for the banking sector is that apart from offering useful and user-friendly services, they need to build a trusting relationship with customers.

This study extends existing body of Internet banking literature by incorporating trust and risk perceptions. The effects of website design and perceived enjoyment on Internet banking acceptance have been examined and were found to be significant in the Indian context. In addition, it enables us to contribute to the current literature on the emerging Indian Internet banking services (IBS) market, which is largely under-researched.

This empirical study aims to understand the interrelationship among the key technology adoption factors including social influence, individual existing knowledge, and individual perceptions of technology (i.e. usefulness, ease of use, and enjoyment) and their effects on individual intention to use a free voluntary service.

The survey method is employed to collect data from universities offering the free mobile messaging service. A structural equation modeling analysis technique is used to analyze data reliability and validity in the measurement model and examine causal relationships among the constructs in the structural model.

The results show that social influence affects individual knowledge and perceptions of the service (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived enjoyment) and successively influences the individual intention to use the free voluntary service. This study indicates that the intrinsic value of perceived enjoyment has a greater impact than the extrinsic value of perceived usefulness in terms of its effect on individual intention to use a free voluntary service. In addition, the effect of perceived usefulness of alternative systems should be taken into account when using perceived usefulness from the technology acceptance model to predict individual's technology adoption decisions under the free voluntary setting.

This study fills the gap in the technology adoption literatures regarding the free voluntary service adoption based on social influence, individual knowledge, and individual perceptions of technology. It assists academics to understand the drivers of technology acceptance under the free voluntary setting and provides guidance for organizations to increase users' acceptability of their free voluntary services.

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing consumers' continued social commerce (s-commerce) intention and its underlying mechanism.

The authors define continued s-commerce intention as consumers' intention to continually participate in s-commerce activities, namely, requesting and sharing commercial information. Grounded in the motivation theory, perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment are identified in this study as the motives behind consumers' continued s-commerce intention. Given the indispensable social facet of s-commerce, the authors include social support as another critical social factor motivating continuance intention. Furthermore, users' perceptions are affected by prior s-commerce outcomes, which concern the effectiveness of the commercial information exchange process. Research suggests that in such a context, the result of communication is jointly determined by source credibility and interactive relationships amongst individuals. Whilst source credibility determines the usefulness of the information transmitted, a social interaction supports this process. Therefore, source credibility and social interactions are crucial to the outcomes of s-commerce, which, in turn, affect consumers' perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and social support in s-commerce. Building on these arguments, the authors propose our research model and then test the hypotheses via a survey.

The authors find that consumers' perceived usefulness and informational social support of s-commerce directly affect their continued s-commerce intention. Moreover, perceived enjoyment leads to continued s-commerce intention via the mediation of perceived usefulness, whilst emotional social support influences continued s-commerce intention through the mediator of informational social support. In addition, source credibility is a significant antecedent of consumers' usefulness, enjoyment and social support perceptions, whilst a social interaction significantly impacts perceived enjoyment and social support.

Various consumer behaviours in s-commerce have been studied; however, the continuance intention to participate in the s-commerce activity remains unknown. This empirical study fills this research gap. Moreover, the authors initially reveal s-commerce participants' utilitarian orientation in the post-adoption stage: perceived usefulness and informational social support affect continuance intention more directly than perceived enjoyment and emotional social support. Further, prior studies on information systems continuance have mainly focused on technical features. By identifying the influence from social factors, i.e. social support, this work extends the literature on information systems continuance.

Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, generate innovative and fast exchanges without any physical form and facilitate online payments; thus, they may bring about revolutions of the future economic system. Recent investigations reveal that China, the second largest Bitcoin market, accounts for a huge volume of Bitcoin trading and mining, which can cast distinct influences on future values of Bitcoin. Therefore, it would be of great significance to probe into the repurchase intention of Bitcoin of the Chinese individuals.

One hundred and forty-three questionnaires were collected from Chinese respondents. SPPS was employed for data analysis of the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that expectation has a positive impact on perceived enjoyment and perceived ease of use. A positive relationship between perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment was confirmed. The findings also reveal that expectation, perceived enjoyment and perceived ease of use have significant impact on satisfaction. Moreover, it is found that perceived enjoyment, perceived ease of use and satisfaction significantly influence the repurchase intention of Bitcoin.

This study encourages future comparative studies to be conducted. Besides, it is recommended to find out other possible antecedents of repurchase intention. Moreover, this study suggested negative effects of Bitcoin to be explored.

In a practical standpoint, this study provides valuable suggestions about cryptocurrencies use and regularization. For instance, education and learnability issues of novice users need to be considered. Further, the regularization/implementation of cryptocurrencies/blockchain technologies is also suggested.

This is the pioneer endeavor which investigates the repurchase intention of Bitcoin. The findings explore some of the possible antecedents which influence repurchase intention of Bitcoin. These findings provide valuable insights and enrich the existing body of literature in the domain of Bitcoin.

This paper aims to examine the complex role of consumer participation by empirically testing a theoretical model within the online context of consumer using product recommendation agents (RAs) that integrates consumer participation into the technology acceptance model (TAM). Recent research starts questioning whether consumer participation is a double-edged sword, although its positive effects have been widely documented in the services marketing literature.

Data were collected from 243 respondents comprising both genders with varied age groups, education levels, household income and ethnicities. Participants interacted with an existing RA, searching product information for a simulated purchase involving either high or low financial risk. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Structural equations modeling (SEM) were used for assessing construct validity and testing hypotheses, respectively.

Consumer participation was found to positively affect enjoyment but negatively affect perceived ease of use of an RA, which was exacerbated when the purchase was of high financial risk. Predictions based on TAM were all supported in this study.

This research evidenced consumer participation’s dual-effect and identified financial risk as a moderator of consumer participation’ negative effect. Future research could employ a different design such as using controlled lab settings and conducting longitudinal studies to replicate the study.

Findings from this research provide guidance to RA design regarding the amount of consumer participation, consumer perceptions of RA use (ease of use, usefulness and enjoyment) and financial risk involved in the purchase.

This research sheds new light on the role of consumer participation through uncovering its dual-effect, thus complementing the services marketing and RA literature.