ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INTERACTIVE DECISION AIDS AND DECISION STRATEGIES: A THEORETICAL ANALYSIS

Internet shops enable customers to easily compare a large number of products. During their buying decision, customers apply decision strategies which describe their way of choosing their preferred product. In order to support the customers, Internet shops offer interactive decision aids like sorting or filtering mechanisms. This paper answers the question, which types of interactive decision aids are necessary to apply specific decision strategies. Based on the analysis, web designers are advised to offer those decision aids that go best with the most commonly used decision strategies and make decisions easier and more precise

A Theory-Based Approach for a Modular System of Interactive Decision Aids

In web stores, a large amount of product information is easily available for consumers. This often leads to information overload on the consumer-side which decreases user-satisfaction and can cause purchase deferral. Therefore, our goal is to prevent consumers from information overload by supporting the cumbersome process of comparing and evaluating products. We propose easy to understand, interactive decision aids, called interactive information management tools such as filtering, sorting and scoring. The contribution of this paper is to (1) retrieve guidelines for designing such tools from both literature on decision behavior research and information systems, and (2) build a prototype following these guidelines. The prototype is evaluated in two usability studies

Facilitating the Usage of Decision Strategies by Interactive Decision Aids: A Conceptual Analysis

Internet shops like amazon.com or activeshopper.com enable customers to compare a large amount of products (e.g., digital camera) and product properties (e.g., price) in form of a comparison matrix. For choosing the preferred product from a comparison matrix, customers apply decision strategies. Riedl et al. (2008), for example, summarize and define thirteen important decision strategies (Behavior Research Methods, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 795-807). The application of most of these strategies can be facilitated by interactive decision aids like (i) sorting of products, (ii) a conditional drop function, or (iii) performing pairwise comparisons between products (see examples below). This research studies the relationship between decision strategies and the proper interactive decision aid(s). In particular, it addresses the following research question: Which type of interactive decision aid is necessary to support the application of specific decision strategies? The provision of decision aids is important, because they may reduce the effort to apply a particular strategy and/or increase decision accuracy. Based on our conceptual analysis, web designers can tailor systems that offer those decision aids that fit best to their customers’ decision strategy, thereby facilitating decision processes

Accountability-Based User Interface Design Artifacts and Their Implications for User Acceptance of AI-Enabled Services

Although AI-enabled interactive decision aids (IDAs) have demonstrated to provide reliable advice, users are rather reluctant to follow this advice. One recently highly discussed reason for this reluctance is users’ perceived unclear accountability of the AI-service regarding the decisions of these AI-based IDAs. Drawing on accountability theory, we designed user-interface (UI) design artifacts for AI-enabled IDAs based on the dimensions identifiability, expectation of evaluation, awareness of monitoring, and social presence and tested them through a scenario-based factorial survey method (N = 629). We show that accountability-emphasizing UI design artifacts individually raise users’ accountability perceptions of the AI-enabled service, which in turn influence users’ compliance to follow the advice from the AI-enabled service. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications, particularly as they inform how to increase the transparency of accountability of AI-enabled services and thus user compliance

Consumer Acceptance of Recommendations by Interactive Decision Aids: The Joint Role of Temporal Distance and Concrete vs. Abstract Communications

Interactive decision aids (IDAs) typically use concrete product feature-based approaches to interact with consumers. Recently however, interaction designs that focus on communicating abstract consumer needs have been suggested as a promising alternative. This article investigates how temporal distance moderates the effectiveness of these two competing IDA communication designs by its effect on consumers’ mental representation of the product decision problem. Temporal distance is inherently connected to IDAs in two ways. Congruency between consumption timing (immediate vs. distant) and IDA communication design (concrete vs. abstract, respectively) increases the likelihood to accept the IDA’s advice. This effect is also achieved by congruency between IDA process timing (immediate vs. delayed delivery of recommendations) and IDA communication design (concrete vs. abstract, respectively). We further show that this process is mediated by the perceived transparency of the IDA process. Managers and researchers need to take into account the importance of congruency between the user and the interface through which companies interact with their users and can further optimize IDAs so that they better match consumers’ mental representations

Consumers pnline: Intentions, orientations and segmentation

Purpose – This paper examines the purchase intentions of online retail consumers, segmented by their purchase orientation. Design/methodology/approach – An e-mail/web survey was addressed to a consumer panel concerning their online shopping experiences and motivations, n = 396. Findings – It is empirically shown that consumer purchase orientations have no significant effect on their propensity to shop online. This contradicts the pervasive view that Internet consumers are principally motivated by convenience. It was found that aspects that do have a significant effect on purchase intention are prior purchase and gender. Research limitations/implications – There are two limitations. First, the sample contained only UK Internet users, thus generalisations about the entire population of Internet users may be questionable. Second, in our measurement of purchase intentions, we did not measure purchase intent per se. Practical implications – These findings indicate that consumer purchase orientations in both the traditional world and on the Internet are largely similar. Therefore, both academics and businesses are advised to treat the Internet as an extension to existing traditional activities brought about by advances in technology, i.e. the multi-channel approach. Originality/value – The paper adds to the understanding of the purchase orientations of different clusters of e-consumer

A commentary on social & experiential (e-)retailing and (e-)shopping deserts

Purpose – The last ten years have seen a gradual withdrawal of retail facilities from many local areas and the consequent growth of ‘shopping deserts’, resulting in social and health disbenefits. This paper examines the potential for e-shopping to fill the vacuum and to assist disadvantaged shoppers. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses prior published research to comment on the extent to which e-retailing may be the shopping solution of the future? Findings – The Internet has limited potential to compensate for shopping deserts, as consumers who do not have a good range of physical shops within walking distance also tend to lack access to the Internet. Research limitations/implications – The paper is based solely on prior research. The authors recommend action research that may hopefully help excluded shoppers to become more included by addressing the problems of access to e-shopping. Practical implications – Government, service providers and e-retailers are may consider interventions such as subsidised Internet access, training and the provision of e-cash. Originality/value – The paper links research from diverse fields relating to shopping deserts, the digital divide, health, wellbeing, social and experiential aspects of (e-)shopping