Search results

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the relationship between web site design characteristics and revisit intention by examining the roles of satisfaction and consumer motives, thus providing managers with strategies that they can adopt to secure revisiting consumers at their web sites.

This paper uses survey method to collect data from 238 respondents and mediation hypotheses are tested with structural equation modelling using LISREL.

The results indicate that for goal‐directed consumers web site content and customization play a more significant role in influencing their satisfaction and revisit intentions than convenience. However, for experiential consumers, content and convenience play a more significant role in satisfaction and revisit intentions than customization options at a web site.

One type of online business is used as a stimulus in this study. Future studies may include different types of web sites. Also, researchers in the future may use actual behavior, instead of intention, to increase the validity of the results.

This paper suggests that marketers interested in revisiting consumers should focus on web site characteristics that lead to satisfaction during their web visit. Also, marketers need to pay attention to the consumer motives at the web site, so that the web site characteristics can be tailored to the motives and would ultimately lead to positive consumer outcomes.

This is the first paper that investigates the moderating effect of consumer motives and mediating effect of web site satisfaction on web site characteristics and revisit intention relationship.

Compares the perceptions of Malaysians (representing eastern, Asian culture) and Australians (representing western, European culture) for four Web site design characteristics – atmospherics, news stories, signs and products and services – as part of the integrated Internet marketing model. Under controlled laboratory conditions, two groupings of 30 subjects evaluated eight Web sites – four in Malaysia and four in Australia – in the retail and services sectors. Hypothesises that the predominant culture is not generalised to another culture. Some tentative support for the research premise is found since where a group’s perceptions for Web design characteristics and their effectiveness was significantly higher, it was for sites originating in that group’s country. Furthermore, perceptions both support and contradict previous research suggesting that Australians prefer an environment of low context and high explicit communications while Asians operate in an environment of high context that stresses implicit communications.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the nature of linkages between characteristics of a service and customer consequences and elicit the types of such linkages.

The paper builds on current research on linkages and customer consequences within the means‐end approach and on a qualitative case study in the context of website use in business‐to‐business relationships.

The paper introduces six types of linkages between characteristics of a service and customer consequences: common and unique, conflicting and non‐conflicting, and homogenous and heterogeneous linkages.

The paper portrays four cases of implications of the linkages for simplicity and homogeneity of the design of services and of their marketing strategies.

The ways in which characteristics of a service are linked with customer consequences of an engagement with the service are of crucial importance in marketing. Despite the importance, research on linkages is scarce. By considering currently neglected aspects such as different units of analysis, different relationships between characteristics and customer consequences, and diversity in characteristics and consequences, the paper introduces new types of linkages. It also depicts the relevance of the knowledge of the linkages for portraying customer value fully.

Prior work has examined antecedents and behavioral outcomes of satisfaction in an offline setting but few studies explore whether the findings hold for increasingly important online settings. This paper extends the prior work to explore the antecedents of e‐satisfaction and the relations between e‐satisfaction and two new behaviorial outcomes related to an online setting; customers' stated purchasing behavior (i.e. conversion) and actual browsing behavior (i.e. stickiness). Using a sample of 145 predominantly multi‐channel retail firms, the paper highlights two main results. First, existing models that examine the antecedents and consequences of satisfaction in the offline setting, also apply to an online setting. Second, Web site characteristics had a significant impact on all three types of behavioral outcomes, while Web site customer service was a significant driver of only retention/referral outcomes. Further, Web site customer service may be a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieving favourable outcomes in online settings.

This study seeks to identify the dimensions of web site attributes that represent online shoppers' perceptions of their favorite clothing web site and to examine the relationship with the evaluation of the relative importance of various clothing web site attributes.

US college students, who had online shopping experience and favorite clothing web sites that they especially like to visit, were surveyed. Hypothesized relationships between the relative importance of general clothing web site attributes and the perceptions of favorite clothing web sites were tested using canonical correlation analysis.

The results revealed three variables, the product information, customer service and navigation factors, were closely related to each other and create a well‐defined dimension in representing the respondents' perceptions of their favorite clothing web sites. These dimensions were fairly well predicted by the following set of independent variables: the product information, navigation, and customer service factors of general clothing web site attributes.

Results cannot be generalized to all young adult consumers and to other consumers. Future research should include other population groups.

This research offers new insights to apparel e‐tailers in building effective web sites that can attract young adult online shoppers to the company and retain them through the web sites.

This study is the first to investigate young adult online consumers' perceptions of their favorite internet web sites in relation to their evaluations of the relative importance of general clothing web sites attributes.

The main purpose of the paper is to investigate and to document the current level of web usage within the confectionery industry in the South Eastern European (SEE) region. Also, the paper aims to examine the web content structure of confectioners in the given region and to explain the impact of the location and the size of the company on the quality of contents published on web sites.

The experimental research was conducted on the sample of 333 companies in the confectionery industry from 5 SEE countries. The research questionnaire included 56 web sites' characteristics divided into five categories.

The confectionery industry uses web sites as “presentation space” only, and the “show‐case” is the main purpose. The implementation of the web in the confectionery industry in SEE countries is correlated with a company's characteristics. Companies within EU member countries more often implement the web as a customer communication channel. However, confectioners in non‐EU countries have more information published on their web sites and their web sites are more interactive.

The paper contributes to a better understanding of web usage within the confectionery industry because it classifies information published on web sites into several categories and describes common web contents in the confectionery industry. Moreover, it discusses the correlation between a company's characteristics (size and location) and web implementation. Finally, it gives an overview of relevant findings of web usage as a customer communication channel within transitional economies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impacts of several consumer characteristics (fashion leadership, impulse buying, bargain shopping), web site attitude, and visit frequency on intention to purchase from a private sale site.

Data were collected from 164 female respondents who were members of at least one private sale site. The sample was selected mainly by using a snowball sampling technique which relied on chain referrals to recruit eligible participants. Factor analysis results suggested that fashion leadership consisted of two dimensions: fashion opinion leadership and fashion innovativeness. Regression analysis was conducted to determine how strongly purchase intention for private sale sites was predicted by fashion opinion leadership, fashion innovativeness, impulse buying, bargain shopping, web site attitude, and visit frequency.

Regression results showed that ease of use was the only dimension of web site attitude that significantly predicted purchase intention. Impulse buying and bargain shopping also significantly influenced purchase intention. Implications for future research and limitations were also discussed.

As private sale sites continue to grow in popularity, insight into the psychology and behaviors of shoppers at these sites has become more important. There has been, however, no published research that examines what motivates consumers to purchase from private sale sites.

In this paper, the aim is to develop a framework for evaluating the web sites of public authorities. The proposed framework consists of four axes: two for assessing the general characteristics and content of the web sites (namely general characteristics and e‐content); and two for assessing specific functionalities addressing their governmental character (namely e‐services and e‐participation).

The proposed framework is gradually built through a critical analysis of the two relevant domains, web site evaluation and e‐government. The methodology used in the case study includes the construction of an appropriate questionnaire for assessing the framework metrics. The practical use of the framework is demonstrated by means of a case study, namely evaluating the web sites of Greek public authorities at local and regional level.

The proposed framework presents a more holistic approach to e‐government web site evaluation, while the case study provides some interesting results with regards to the shortcomings of Greek public authority web sites.

The proposed framework could be further enhanced by incorporating an evaluation of the demand site of e‐government. Moreover, a more thorough approach with regard to privacy would have to include metrics to be answered directly by IT security personnel.

The proposed framework can be used for evaluating the web sites of public authorities in a more comprehensive way. As an example, the case study reveals significant results of practical importance by indicating overall progress, aspects that are under‐developed, etc.

This paper provides a novel framework to e‐government web site evaluation that also considers e‐government services and e‐participation. We anticipate that it will be of interest to both researchers and practitioners alike.

Despite the growth in adoption of technology by governments, the assessment of quality in electronically delivered public services has been relatively lacking. Past researches on information systems have identified information and service quality, system use, playfulness, and system design quality as critical factors of successful service delivery in e‐commerce. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the applicability of system and information quality criteria in evaluating government e‐services websites. The main research problem identified in this study was “what are the system and information quality characteristics of government service delivery websites?”

Based on a survey of 97 Municipalities from all the 21 regions of Sweden, the authors examine the presence of system quality features, specifically functionality, navigation, and accessibility; and measures of information quality in government websites. A systematic random sampling was chosen as the suitable approach; 290 municipalities are organized in 21 counties and we have chosen every 3rd number of municipalities from the list. An online survey was conducted, with 408 valid responses taken. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted for system and information quality.

Results indicate that accessibility and the navigation facility are important in determining a citizen's perceived system quality. Information preciseness, timeliness, and sufficiency were found to be key measures of information quality in government e‐services. Furthermore, an important finding from this research is that theories from information systems (IS), e‐commerce, and marketing were found to be applicable in assessing government e‐tax services within the broader area of government‐to‐citizen (G2C) service delivery systems. In addition, a quantitative study was conducted among citizens to determine system and information quality characteristics.

The results presented in this paper can help the authorities to identify key quality criteria for e‐tax services that are valued by citizens and consequently improve service levels. Taking the context into consideration, additional variables are incorporated from literature that spans several disciplines (IS, e‐commerce, and marketing), and some re‐specifications are made to identify system and information quality criteria in the context of an e‐tax filing service, which was the main theoretical contribution of this study.

A main focus in recent online consumer research has been on context specific trust, risk, and online buying experience. Despite the importance, their individual level “equivalents” – trust disposition, risk aversion, and technology readiness – have received limited attention. This research attempts to fill that gap by focussing on these crucial personality traits.

This research employs a survey‐based method to test a theoretically grounded set of hypotheses. The measurement model is tested using SEM and the hypotheses are tested using regression techniques.

The personality characteristics are found to have significant moderating effects on online purchase intentions. Interestingly, provided the consumers are satisfied, risk aversion is found to increase the likelihood of purchase. Moreover, while technology readiness increases the likelihood of online purchase, dispositional trust is found not to have a similar effect.

Significant full and quasi moderator effects of three hitherto untested personality traits on online purchase behaviour are found. Results show that risk aversion, trust disposition, and technology readiness are fundamental to online consumer behaviour literature.

The results suggest that to be successful, relatively unknown web‐based service providers need to go beyond matching their large competitor and need to offer unique web sites to browsers. Results also indicate that personality traits pose both significant challenges as well as unexpected opportunities to online service providers in identifying inherently more loyal customers.

The paper identifies a set of hither to untested personality traits that have fundamental relevance to online consumer behaviour. It also offers practical recommendations to relatively unknown online service providers on how to compete with their better known competitors. Results are generalisable to online service providers in a number of industries.