How do portuguese college students perceive e-commerce?

This paper identifies that e-commerce adopters and non-adopters rate differently each of the supposed e-commerce qualities. While adopters consider that the most important qualities of e-commerce are best values on e-commerce, detailed information on e-commerce, timeliness, easiness of comparing and comfort, non-adopters rate personalization and availability higher than adopters do. The various patterns of attitude regarding e-commerce qualities were identified through a principal component factor analysis that proposed four factors: detail towards the optimal choice; practical; best values; and flexibility. The structural equation model explained e-commerce adoption based on the factors above and identified that while high ratings of detail towards optimal choice, practical and best values have a positive impact on e-commerce adoption, high ratings of flexibility is negatively associated with it. The negative association between the valuation of flexibility as an e-commerce quality and e-commerce adoption suggests that e-commerce is not providing enough flexibility, which is composed by personalization and availability, since the adopters rate it lower than the non-adopters do, what leads us to recommend improvements on these features towards the encouragement of the Internet users that are not yet e-commerce adopters

Assessing Motivation in Ecommerce

This research-in-progress paper examines factors that affect ecommerce. The design of ecommerce web sites has offered many challenges and opportunities for organizations throughout the world. There has been a rich stream in the information systems research on the antecedents of good web design. This has included ideas of how the size of the web site (e.g. the download delay) affects users’ perceptions or even how interactive components affect consumer behavior. The contributions of this paper are two-fold. First, a conceptual model of the factors influencing online consumer motivation is presented. This model draws on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) as well as the current practices used in web design. The model adapts concepts from SDT, and references components of use of motivation in design. Second, this paper presents an instrument that has been validated in laboratory and field tests

A classification of user interface metaphors in B2C ecommerce website design

The role of metaphors in B2C ecommerce user interface design, why it is considered so important and how they could be classified is discussed in this paper. User interface design requires designing metaphors according to the essentials terms and concepts and images representing data, tasks roles, organizations and people. This study begins with an overview of the nature of metaphors from its humble beginning as a literary device to its present status as fundamental aspect of human intelligence. The aim of this study is to classify the user interface metaphors in B2C ecommerce website for ease of understanding them. As a process, series of websites are taken as examples and analyzed of the the use of user interface metaphors and the frequency of metaphor usage. The research methods include analyzing the top twenty B2C ecommerce websites published in 2000, for the extent of metaphor usage, through analysis matrix and graphs. This research classifies the user interface metaphors into two broad categories; organizational metaphors and visual metaphors. Organizational metaphors are further classified as structural and navigational metaphors and visual metaphors are classified as symbolic metaphors and personalization. The outcome of this study would aid researchers and designers in creating ecommerce websites

Online consumer motivation Towards an understanding of A priori motivations in ecommerce interactions

This dissertation is broken into three essays that focus on how a priori motivation can play an important role in ecommerce outcomes. The first essay theoretically develops the online consumer motivation construct. Online consumer motivation provides a clearing house for how a user's individual characteristics and the task at hand will influence perceptions of technology presentation. Further, it is proposed that by offering a Web site interface that is congruent with the user's online consumer motivation, Web site utilization and task performance will improve. In addition to the conceptual model, several propositions predict the interplay of key constructs. The paper concludes with a prescriptive protocol for testing the proposed theory as well as for guiding the design of ecommerce Web sites. The second essay focuses on conceptualizing and developing an instrument for online consumer motivation. Specifically, this essay identifies the important extant literature in both psychology and an information system then can be extended to provide grounds for online consumer motivation. The second essay uses two laboratory experiments to validate the scales used to measure online consumer motivations. The third and final essay uses Task-Technology Fit theory to posit a temporal view of online consumer motivation (i.e., why a user has chosen to visit a particular Web site at a given time) that can inform Web site design. This includes one laboratory experiment and one survey study to provide: 1) empirical evidence if the existence of online consumer motivation, 2) the affect of online consumer motivation on ecommerce outcomes and 3) a future stream of research. By first offering a theoretical development of online consumer motivation, followed by the instrument development and then the empirical instantiation, this dissertation hope to not only inform research but also provide guidance to ecommerce practitioners

THE JOY OF TECHNOLOGY VS. PRIVACY

Few organizations anywhere remain untouched by the profound changes that have swept over their business efforts in the past few years. Customers of all groups have developed much more sophisticated expectations, demands and services patterns than ever before due to the advent of the Web. The Internet provides easy access to extensive information about organization services, as well as a rich array of interaction options. This means customer’s loyalty is tougher than ever to build and maintain. Neither new prospects nor existing customer will respond to business messages that are not timely, relevant and offer recognized value. By reducing time and distance to nearly zero, technology has shifted the power in the customer-organization relationship to the customer. Customer now chooses when, how and where they will interact with organization services. Also customer noticed that current organization web services provide information through a one size fits-all approach where all customer travel through the same network of pages and directories, and that delivers the same information each time the customer logs on. As organization web sites are becoming larger and more complex system, which include huge databases, text search, multimedia, interactive interfaces and advance e-learning tools, from user point of view, it becomes very difficult to find useful updated information and personalized services hidden in huge cover of the organization database

Luxury brands and e-commerce "take advantage of the digital era": a research on consumer insight and attitudes on online sale f luxury gods

Today, the Internet represents one of the greatest growth drivers, essential in all industries. Most of the brands are now starting to be present on the platform: own sales website, web partners sales, social media pages, etc. However, the adoption of the Internet by luxury brands is a paradox: the true sense of the definition of luxury versus the actual utilization of the Internet. It has been slow to be adopted in the luxury market: luxury must reflect the values of uniqueness, rarity and selectivity with a unique purchasing and consumption experience while the Internet is ordinary, collective, independent, virtual and represents a mass market tool. Therefore, despite their strong need for exclusivity control and even sense of definition, luxury brands are forced to also appropriate this new communication tool and more difficult to use it as a distribution tool. Indeed, it is questionable whether it is appropriate to use digital as a distribution channel (ecommerce) and not only as a communication channel for luxury brands while at the same time highlighting the core essence of the definition of Luxury. Accordingly, this research has targeted the online sales of luxury brands and more specifically examines consumer attitudes and insights regarding the sale of luxury goods on the Internet