Effects of new-to-market E-store features on first time browsers

Understanding the effects of website design features on website usage is complicated when buyers differ in their willingness to process information to make decisions. However, it becomes more difficult for a new-to-market e-store with no established familiarity. While extant literature suggests the use of interactivity and personalization features offered by e-stores to reduce consumers’ risk perceptions and improve trustworthiness of such stores, there is little guidance on the level of feature provision required to enhance consumer satisfaction in making product selections from a new and unfamiliar e-store. The authors explore this issue in an online experiment with 273 subjects browsing 4 websites offering identical products but with variable levels of interactivity and personalization features. Findings reveal a positive association between the level of feature provision and browser decision-making outcomes. However, interactivity features are more effective for maximizers, whereas personalization ones are more effective for satisficers

UNDERSTANDING CONSUMERS' ONLINE INFORMATION RETRIEVAL AND SEARCH: IMPLICATIONS FOR FIRM STRATEGIES

The growth of the Internet and other digitization technologies has enabled the unbundling of the physical and information components of the value chain and has led to an explosion of information made available to consumers. Understanding the implications of this new informational landscape for theory and practice is one of the key objectives of my research. My dissertation seeks to understand how firms can use their knowledge of online consumer search and information seeking behaviors to design optimal information provision strategies. The main premise is that consumers' online search behaviors are key to understanding consumers' underlying information needs and preferences. In my first essay I specifically focus on big-ticket, high-involvement goods for which firms essentially have sparse information on their potential buyers - making information reflected in consumers' online search very valuable to online retailers. I use a new and rich source of clickstream data obtained from a leading clicks-and-mortar retailer to model consumers' purchase outcomes as a function of the product and price information provided by the retailer, and find interesting differences for sessions belonging to customers classified as browsers, directed shoppers and deliberating researchers. Since consumers typically straddle online as well as traditional channels, the second essay in my dissertation examines how online information acquired by consumers affects their choices in offline used-good markets. Secondary markets characterized by information asymmetries have typically resorted to quality-signaling mechanisms such as certification to help reduce the associated frictions. However, the value of traditional quality signals to consumers depends crucially on the extent of the asymmetries in these markets. The online information available to consumers today may help bridge such asymmetries. Drawing upon a unique and extensive dataset of over 12,000 consumers who purchased used vehicles, I examine the impact of their information acquisition from online intermediaries on their choice of (reliance on) one such quality signal - certification, as well as the price paid. These findings will help firms to better understand how the provision of different types of online information impacts consumers' choices and outcomes, and therefore help them in designing better and targeted strategies to interact with consumers

STATE OF SHOPPING AND THE VALUE OF INFORMATION: INSIGHTS FROM THE CLICKSTREAM

A critical challenge for online retailers is to determine what types of product and price information are best suited to influence online conversion. While it has long been known that customers differ in their state of shopping, it is cumbersome to learn about such latent differences offline. The availability of clickstream data however helps us in identifying meaningful segments of sessions on the basis of customers’ online behaviors. We examine whether product and price information had different impacts on customers belonging to three states of shopping, and also assess the effect on outcomes within a session and across sessions. Our results question the practice of offering price promotions to all customers of a store, and highlight the value of product information in increasing loyalty for some customers. Depending on the retailer’s goal– short term conversion versus longer-term customer relationship–a different information provision strategy is likely to be optimal

Clicks to conversion: the value of product information and price incentives

Journal ArticleThis study uses clickstream data obtained from a large online durable goods retailer to examine how different types of information - product-related and price-related information provided by retailers - impact purchase-related outcomes for consumers. Using mixture-modeling techniques to analyze latent differences among customers, we find that consumers fall under three distinct categories - directed shoppers, deliberating researchers and browsers. In examining the impacts of information on purchase outcomes, we find that product and price-related information impacts consumers in these three shopping states differently. While product information highlighting features of product alternatives in a category has the strongest impact on deliberating researchers, specific price incentives related to category-level discounts increases the likelihood of purchase for both directed shoppers as well as browsers. Price incentives relating to site-wide free shipping have a positive impact on purchase for all consumers. Surprisingly, category-level discounts have a negative impact on deliberating researchers, while rich product information hampers the purchase process of directed shoppers. We discuss the managerial implications of our findings and the role of clickstream analytics in designing dynamic targeting and information provisioning strategies for online retailers

TechNews digests: Jan - Nov 2009

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

Technical pre-study for the ExMS project

This report aims to give an overview of software and hardware platforms available now or in the near future for building a prototype of an ExMS application (for an overview of the ExMS project, see Appendix). The report also gives an overview of the different technologies for building third-party mobile client software applications that are in use today. The report is composed of three sections. The first section is a general discussion on mobile client software and the different technologies that can be used to develop third-party mobile client software. The next section continues with a specific discussion on ExMS and answers the following questions: What is the general architecture of the ExMS application? What alternatives exist for implementing the ExMS prototype? The final section of the report is a recommendation of hardware and software platform for building the ExMS prototype

Study on Differences Among Online Consumer Groups based on Factors Affecting Online Purchase Intention

An online purchase intention and behaviour model was empirically tested in this study among both online buyers and online non buyers in the context of search goods and experience goods. The focus of this exploratory research was to have an understanding regarding consumers’ online purchasing intentions and behaviours against existing attitudes towards online purchasing, demographic factors and existing ‘technology use’ and ‘access’. Data for the survey was collected through an online questionnaire to a purposive sample. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyze data. Findings of the study revealed that the consumer factor and the marketing factor remained significant between the three groups namely online store visitors, online store browsers, and online buyers. In addition to that among the online buyers marketing factor failed to remain significant against the type of goods purchased whether ‘experience goods’ or ‘search goods’