B2C web site quality and emotions during online shopping episodes: An empirical study

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Abstract

This paper explores the impact of the quality of a web site on the cognitive process leading to consumers’ emotions—considered as direct antecedents to shopping behaviors and operationalized as mental states of readiness arising from the appraisal of events. A parsimonious theoretical model was defined and tested with data collected from 215 web-shopping episodes during which consumers were shopping for low-touch products. Analysis of the results showed that web site quality had a positive impact on the cognitive appraisal of situational state, which in turn influenced five of the six emotions of the proposed model: liking, joy, pride, dislike, and frustration. Results also showed that a substantial number of shoppers experienced intensively the emotions of liking and joy. Moreover, this paper highlights several implications that could help managers and webmasters improve the quality of their web sites.

Introduction

Without being the object of much media attention, the number of people shopping online is increasing steadily. Three out of four Internet users in the United States aged 14 and older are shopping online for retail products and services [21]. This represents 114.2 million online shoppers, approximately 12% more than in 2002. In Canada, an estimated 3.2 million households actively participated in e-commerce in 2003, up from 2.8 million the year before [65]. As a result, North American online sales have progressed rapidly over recent years, notwithstanding the fact that B2C sales outpaced non-e-commerce sales by 25% between 1999 and 2002 in the U.S. [75]. Therefore, for well established Canadian and U.S. companies covering a wide range of retail sectors (e.g., J.C. Penney, Delta Airlines, Best Buy, the Target Group discount chain, and Indigo–Canada's largest book retailer), online retail sales are now the fast-growing part of their business. In addition, an increasing number of brick and mortar organizations selling expensive and complex goods are launching online initiatives to compete with pure-play online retailers; for example, Home Depot is now offering more than 1800 products including trash compactors, cook-tops, dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, and wall ovens on its web site. Further, Birks & Sons – a Canadian manufacturer and retailer of fine jewellery – is using its web site to sell a wide variety of products advertised in its catalogue.

While the B2C market is growing and profitable, the competition for market share is also increasing in many retail sectors (e.g., books, travel, information, music, insurance, electronics). Therefore, to remain competitive, it is imperative for e-retailers to invest time and money to design, develop, and maintain high quality web sites, since customers are more likely to shop on web sites that exhibit high quality attributes.

Previous studies of web site quality have focussed mainly on defining and operationalizing the concept. Very few have attempted to measure the impact of web site quality on consumers’ behaviors. Moreover, no study has yet attempted to measure the impact of web site quality on the cognitive and affective processes leading to behaviors sought by e-retailers (e.g., exploring the web site, requesting additional information, purchasing, and revisiting).

Based on literature covering the concepts of quality and atmospherics, as well as the theoretical foundations in psychology of emotions, we examined the relationship between web site quality and the shopper's cognitive process leading to emotions while shopping online. The hypotheses we postulated were:

  • (1)

    Does the quality of a web site influence consumers’ overall evaluation of the shopping episode? and

  • (2)

    Does consumers’ overall evaluation of the online shopping episode impact the intensity of the emotions felt by them?

The main objective was thus to demonstrate that web site quality is a noteworthy factor that affects the cognitive processes leading to emotions while shopping.

Section snippets

The importance of consumers’ affective states

In the marketing field, research has shown that affect – the term for a set of specific mental processes, including feelings, moods, and emotions – is important in explaining the behavior of consumers. Using the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) paradigm [45] as a foundation, several studies have found empirical evidence supporting the relationship between pleasure (whether individuals perceive the environment as being enjoyable or not) and several approach behaviors, such as staying longer in

Web site quality

Research on the concept of web site quality can be classified broadly into four complementary research categories. The first focused on web site functionalities (e.g., design, hypertext links, response time, and search engines) and/or content [7], [24], [33], [36], [52]. The dimensions identified have generally been: functional and navigational issues (speed and ease of navigation), content and style (currency and presentation), and contact information. Influenced by TAM, the second category

Research model and hypotheses

From searches for articles we conclude that no empirical study has yet explored possible relationships between web site quality, cognitive appraisals (emotions’ antecedents) and emotions experienced when online shopping. As such, our parsimonious research model consists of the three groups of variables: web site quality, the cognitive appraisal of situational state, and six emotions (see Fig. 2).

Data collection

Data were collected by means of a field survey. The participants were students at the Faculté d’administration de l’Université de Sherbrooke—a business administration school in the province of Quebec, Canada. Students were considered appropriate surrogates for real world online shopping, because they have most of the attributes of the expected population [27], [44], [67]. A research assistant visited numerous classrooms at the Faculté d’administration to recruit the students randomly. No

Analysis methods

PLS, as implemented in Mplus Version 3.11, was chosen for data analysis, as it is more prediction-oriented than LISREL; this makes PLS more appropriate for exploratory research [6]. Moreover, it allows for latent constructs to be modeled as either formative or reflective indicators. Reflective items represent the effects of the constructs and therefore “reflect” the construct of interest, whereas formative measures are items that cause the construct [11]. As pointed out by Chin [14], reflective

Discussion

Our study demonstrated that web site quality positively affects the cognitive appraisal of situational state and the more positive the evaluation of online shopping experience, the higher the intensity of the emotions of liking, joy and pride. However, the more negative the evaluation, the higher the intensity of dislike and frustration. It also confirmed that six emotions (liking, joy, pride, dislike, frustration, and fear) were experienced by consumers during web shopping, though the mean

Limitations

There are several limitations in our study. First, the selection of the number of web sites was limited to four; this prevents generalization. Second, even though the researchers made all possible efforts to simulate a real life shopping experience, participants had to follow a set of guidelines. Third, since this study was cross-sectional in nature, the findings may be biased by a common method variance. Fourth, the impact of participants’ involvement with the product – in this case the level

Contributions

Our research has provided several important theoretical contributions. It was the first to define emotions as mental states of readiness arising from cognitive appraisals and to propose instruments that capture them for users of IS. It showed that six emotions were experienced by consumers while web shopping. We also showed that it is possible to apply Roseman et al.'s theoretical framework to non-dramatic events like shopping online and demonstrated that web site quality can impact several

Jean Éthier is an assistant professor in the Department of Information System and Quantitative Methods at the Faculty of Administration of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada. He received a PhD in Management in 2005 from HEC-Montréal. His research interests include emotions experienced by users of web sites, web site interface design, adoption and implementation of e-commerce technologies, and e-government.

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  • Cited by (0)

    Jean Éthier is an assistant professor in the Department of Information System and Quantitative Methods at the Faculty of Administration of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada. He received a PhD in Management in 2005 from HEC-Montréal. His research interests include emotions experienced by users of web sites, web site interface design, adoption and implementation of e-commerce technologies, and e-government.

    Pierre Hadaya is an assistant professor in the Department of Information System and Quantitative Methods at the Faculty of Administration of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada. He holds a PhD in Management of Technology from the École Polytechnique de Montréal. His main research interests lie at the intersection of information technology management, business strategy, and interorganizational design.

    Jean Talbot is an professor of information technology at HEC Montréal. He obtained his doctorate in Information Systems from Université de Montpellier in France. Before his current position as Director of the MBA program, he served as Chair of the Information technology department at HEC Montréal. His articles were published in MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems and Revue internationale de gestion. His research interests include IT project risk management, enterprise architecture, and e-commerce.

    Jean Cadieux is an professor in the Department of Information System and Quantitative Methods at the Faculty of Administration at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada. He received the Institutional price for the quality of his teaching. He is a statistician and a researcher in the Work Organisation Research Center (WORC) at the University of Sherbrooke and in the Ventures Capital in the field of finance. His interest in research is based on latent variables and latents class analysis.

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