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Electronic Store Design and Consumer Choice: An Empirical Study.

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DOI: 10.1109/HICSS.2000.926863 · Source: DBLP

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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

Electronic Store Design and Consumer Choice: an Empirical Study

Ting-Peng Liang and Hung-Jeng Lai

Department of Information Management
National Sun Yat-sen University
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Liang@mis.nsysu.edu.tw

Abstract
Web-based electronic stores have become
more and more popular. However, there are not
many guidelines, nor theories, showing what
features of a store would work and why. This
paper develops a set of functional guidelines for
designing electronic stores and classifies them
into three categories: motivational, hygiene, and
media richness factors. An empirical study was
conducted to evaluate the relative effect of these
factors. The results show that the store design
does have an effect on consumer purchase
decision. A two-factor theory is plausible:
hygiene factors are the major concern when
consumers decide whether to shop
electronically, while motivational factors play a
key role when consumers choose among
different electronic stores. Media richness
factors are, in general, less important. The
implication of the findings is that, for a web
store to beat its electronic competitors,
providing good transactional support is the key.
If they would like to attract customers from
traditional stores, special attentions must be
paid to the hygiene factors.
1. Introduction
Electronic commerce is the cutting edge
for today’s business. The introduction of
Internet, coupled with the rapid proliferation of
world wide web (WWW), has created a
challenging arena for the future. A surge of
interests in electronic commerce has propagated
from the United States to virtually every corner
in the world. Web-based electronic stores on the
Internet increase in an unprecedented speed.
More and more consumers are using Internet as a
valuable source for collecting information and
placing orders.
According to reports from the Internet
Society, over 186 countries have been connected
with Internet. The total number of users is
approximately 30 million by the end of 1996
(Chen, 1997). More than half US Internet users
purchased merchandise online, and sales totaled
more than $500 million in 1996. As the Internet
continues to grow, analysts predict $100 billion
in retail Internet sales by the year of 2000
(Hamilton, 1997). These figures indicate that
Internet is an extremely promising market. In
fact, some early birds have already converted the
opportunity into fortunes. For example, Amazon
sold more than 17 million dollars of books and
Auto-by-Tel sold more than 200 thousand
automobiles through the Internet (Her, 1997).
Given the enormous business potential,
research in the area has attracted much attention
recently. For instance, Hoffman, et al (1997)
and Hamilton (1997) examined the opportunities
and challenges of the web. Tennebaum, et al.
(1997) proposed an architecture for Internet
commerce. Kambil (1997) studied potential
electronic business processes. Bailey and Bakos
(1997) examined the impact of electronic
markets on intermediaries. Lee and Clark (1996)
examined the impact of electronic markets on
firm competitiveness and market structures.
Jarvenpaa and Todd (1996) studied consumer
reactions to electronic shopping and identified
product perceptions, shopping experience, and
customer services as major factors for
consumers. Bhimani (1996) and Denning (1997)
discussed the security in electronic commerce.
Panurach (1996) and Neuman (1997) studied
electronic payment systems. Gupta, et al
(1996,1997) studied merchandise pricing in
electronic commerce. Liang and Huang (1999)
found that transaction costs play a key role in
consumer selection of electronic channels in an
empirical study.
Although some stores are quite successful,
many of them have difficulties in attracting
enough customers to visit and purchase. Since
there is little face-to-face contact between the
store manager and customers in electronic stores,
the web pages become the sole source for
customers to know the items available at the
store and make a purchase. Therefore, the
homepage design of an electronic store is much
more critical than the layout of a traditional
store. A well-designed store that can deliver

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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000
information more accurately is assumed to be
more attractive for customers to visit and
purchase.
The purpose of this article is to develop
guidelines for designing a good electronic store
on the web and examine the effect of store
design on consumer choice. In addition, we
intend to explore whether and why certain
requirements are more important than others.
The importance of electronic store design is
understandable. It is well-known that, in a
traditional store, floor plan and shelf layout have
significant effect on sales. Design of information
systems is also known to have effect of system
usage and user satisfaction. For electronic
stores, therefore, it is reasonable to assume that a
well-designed store will have positive effects on
customer choice.
In this paper, the consumer choice model
proposed by Engel, Kollat and Blackwell (1982),
called the EKB model, is adopted to induce the
functional requirements at each stage of the
customer decision process. The derived
requirements are then organized to create a set of
guidelines for designing and evaluating
electronic stores. These guidelines are then
grouped into three theoretical categories:
motivators, hygiene factors, and media richness
factors. Motivators, such as having a good search
engine, provide direct support to the customer
transaction process. Hygiene factors, such as
having a better security, protect customers from
risks or unwanted events in the transaction
process. Media richness factors, such as
providing chat rooms, add more information
channels or richness in information presentation
during the transaction.
An empirical study was conducted to
evaluate the relative effect of various design
factors. The result shows that the quality of store
design has significant effects on consumer
choice. The experimental subjects purchased
more from the well-designed electronic stores.
The subjects also indicated higher willingness to
return to the well-designed stores for future visit
and purchase. Information collected from the
experimental subjects allows a two-factor theory
to be constructed for explaining the observation:
hygiene factors are the major concern when
consumers decide whether to shop
electronically, while motivators play a key role
when consumers choose among different
electronic stores. Media richness factors are, in
general, less important. The implication of the
findings is that, for a web store to beat its
electronic competitors, providing good
transactional support to the customer is the key.
If they would like to attract customers from the
traditional stores, attentions must be paid to the
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hygiene factors.
2. Guidelines for Designing an
Electronic Store
When people purchase at an electronic
store, they may have different considerations at
different decision stages. A good design must
support customer needs at each stage of their
decision processes. Therefore, the EKB model
was used as a base to derive user requirements
for electronic stores. The model divides
consumer decision processes into five stages:
problem recognition, search for information,
evaluation of alternatives, choice, and outcome
evaluation. When a problem is recognized,
demand for certain products that can eliminate
the recognized problem is derived. Product
information is collected and alternative products
are proposed and evaluated. Once an alternative
is chosen, the consumer evaluates the outcome
and saves the experience for the future.
Following the model, possible support and
functional requirements for an electronic stores
at different stages can be summarized in the
following.
2.1 Problem Recognition
Problem recognition is the stage where
customers feel the need for a certain product.
Factors that may help customers recognize a
need include environmental stimulation,
individual experience, and inner motivation of
the consumer. Although it is hard to support
individual experience and inner motivation
through store design, developing a stimulating
environment may be helpful. Possible guidelines
include the following:
1. Easy to get started
To achieve this goal, the store needs to
have (1) Consistent interface styles, and (2)
Hierarchical product organization
2. Guiding shopping routes
Most electronic stores have thousands or
even millions of items (such as the Amazon
bookstore), it is necessary to have a good
shopping guide and search engine. Proper use of
special effects and carefully designed hyperlinks
are also very important.
3. Stimulating the desire of purchase
To stimulate the desire of purchase, the
following are possible alternatives:
(1) Using POP advertisement
(2) On-line broadcasting of background
music
(3) Adding auction mechanism
4. Providing reference groups
Consumers sometimes rely on their
friends or other consumers for opinions. For
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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000
example, people tend to go to popular stores that
have more visitors. Consumers may have fun by
knowing the existence of other shoppers. Two
approaches may be used:
(1) Showing the number of current
visitors
(2) Providing chat rooms
2.2 Search for information
Before making a purchase, consumers
often look for relevant information. Therefore,
providing functions to support information
search may be useful.
1. Allowing fast product search
A good search mechanism that helps
customers to find a particular item rapidly is
important. In addition to a proper organization
of products, another alternative is to have a built-
in search engine. Customers use the engine to
find what they need.
2. Providing value-added information
One advantage of electronic stores is their
ability to offer value-added information. This
information, such as the best sellers, headline
news, fashion trends, or activity announcements,
may be useful for interested customers.
3. Providing customized Information
Another advantage of electronic store is
its ability in providing and using customized
information. For instance, the system can
analyze sales data and consumer preferences by
data mining or other techniques to create
customized information.
2.3 Evaluation of alternatives
A store may provide functions to support
customer evaluation of products and to help
build trust in an electronic shopping
environment.
1. Support of product evaluation
During product evaluation, customers
often compare candidates by certain attributes,
inquire information from staff, and bargain for a
better price (Baty and Lee, 1995). It helps if a
store provides:
(1) Comparison of prices and other
attributes
(2) Customer interactions
2. Building the trust in an electronic
environment
For customers who are not familiar with
electronic purchasing, it is important to build
their confidence. Possible mechanisms include:
(1) Claiming Security of transactions
(2) Offering the VIP system
(3) Providing adequate service phone
numbers
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2.4 Choice
At the choice stage, consumers need tools
to aggregate information and make a selection.
Functions that make their choice easier and
suggest for more purchases are useful.
1. Providing shopping carts for easy handling
of multiple items
In a traditional store, consumers often use
shopping barrows or carts to carry their
merchandise. In the electronic environment,
shopping carts are helpful for consumers to order
multiple items and control their budgets.
2. Suggesting substitute products, if necessary
The system may help customers choose
proper products by offering choice models.
Sometimes, customers may be restricted by their
budgets. In this case, providing information
about substitute products may help sell more.
3. Using online salespersons
Sometimes, having on-line salespersons or
intelligent agents to deal with special problems
may be necessary. Their main responsibility is
to interact with customers, observe consumer's
reaction, and promote their products.
2.5 Transaction and post-sales services
After selecting a product, the transaction
process and post-sales services become
important.
1. Supporting the transaction process
Major steps in a transaction process and their
possible support include:
(1) Easy to sign up as a member
(2) Placing an order on-line
(3) Multiple alternatives for delivering
products
(4). Multiple methods to pay for the
product
2. Post-sales services
(1) Inquiring and tracking order status:
Customers often would like to know the status of
their order. They would feel more comfortable if
the status is conveniently available.
(2) Allowing for product returns: Support
of product returns is also necessary.
(3) Organizing buyer clubs: A buyer club
provides a channel through which buyers can
exchange their opinions and share their
experiences. This may increase customer loyalty.
In summary, from the consumer’s
perspective, a good electronic stores must
provide adequate functions to support their
shopping needs throughout the whole customer
decision process. Table 1 is a summary of the
requirements described above.
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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

Table 1. Functional requirements at different stages

Problem Information Evaluation Choice Transaction/ Post-

Recognition Search sales service
- Consistent style - Fast search - Price comparison - Shopping carts - Easy to sign up
- Product - Value-added - Customer - Substitute - Order on-line
organization information interaction suggestion - Home delivery
- Guiding routes - Customized - Security - On-line sales - Multiple payment
- Special effect information - VIP person methods
- POP - Service phone - Credit card
- On-line - Product tracking
broadcasting - Allowing for
- Auction product returns
- Visitor - Organizing buyer
information clubs
- Chat room

Hygiene Current
factors Purchase

Design Consumer Future

Motivators
Quality Choice Visit

Media
Future
richness
Purchase
factors

Figure 1: Research Framework

3. Empirical Study again in the future. The first measure is an

In order to examine whether the store
design affects customer purchase decision and
the underlying mechanism of effective design, an
empirical study was conducted. The study
includes two major dimensions. One is to assess
the quality of store design and the other is to
analyze consumer choice of electronic stores.
The assessment of design quality was done by
both consumers and experts based on the factors
discussed in the previous section. Consumer
choice was measured in three ways: consumer’s
current choice, their willingness to visit again in
the future, and their willingness to purchase
objective recording of whether they did purchase
from the store considered to be the best in design
by them, and the later two are their reported
willingness to visit or purchase again in the
future. Figure 1 shows the framework for the
empirical study. Three hypotheses can be
formulated.
H1: Better-designed electronic stores will
attract more consumers to purchase.
H2: Better-designed electronic stores will
attract more consumers to visit again in the
future.
H3: Better-designed electronic stores will
attract more consumers to purchase again in the

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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

future. types of factors. Table 2 shows the factors in

Design quality is determined by three
kinds of factors: motivators, hygiene factors, and
media richness factors. A motivator is a design
factor that may motivate the customer to shop
from a store because the shopping process is
easier. For instance, providing a good search
engine is a motivator because it helps the
customer to find the desired merchandise.
Allowing for convenient purchase of multiple
items is also a motivator. A hygiene factor is a
design factor that prevents possible problems
associated with electronic transactions.
Providing good security and allowing for return
of goods are two examples of hygiene factors.
Media richness is a medium’s capacity for
immediate feedback, multiple cues, language
variety, and personal focus of sources (Daft &
Lagend, 1984; Daft, et al., 1987). It has been
used to study information systems recently.
Media richness factors are defined as factors
associated with the nature of providing multiple
communication channels, multiple sources of
information, and multiple presentations of
information. For example, providing chat rooms
is a media richness factor. The design quality is
measured by the degree of having these three
Table 2. Classification of Factors
Motivator Hygiene Factor
- Search engine - Security
- Easy to register - Product tracking
- Shopping carts - Allowing for product returns
- Home delivery - Service phone
- Order on-line - Consistent style
- Multiple payment methods -
Credit card payment
each category.
3.1 Subjects and experimental design
Three electronic bookstores in Taiwan
were chosen for the experiment. They were
Kingston (www. kingstone.com.tw), Books
(www.books.com.tw), and Sanmin
(sanmin.com.tw). Kingston and Sanmin also
have traditional stores, while Books is a pure
electronic store. Three experts were asked to
assess the design quality of the stores based on
the attributes listed in Table 1. Thirty student
volunteers (21 male and 9 female) were recruited
and each received an NT$500 (equivalent to
US$16) stipend for the experiment. All subjects
had experience in using WWW, owned at least
one email address and a credit card. Twenty-five
of them had visited at least one electronic store
before participating the experiment and eight had
purchased from electronic stores. Table 3 shows
the profile of the participants. Since purchasing
books is a common real-world behavior for
students, using student subjects in this
experiment is less likely to incur the limitations
associated with using them in other empirical
studies.
Media Richness Factor
- Product organization
- Guiding routes
- Price comparison
- VIP
- Substitute suggestion
- POP
- Value-added information
- Customized information
- On-line sales person
- Buyer clubs
- Customer interaction
- Special effect
- On-line broadcasting
- Auction
- Visitor number
- Chat room

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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000
Table 3. Profile of the Subjects
Gender Age
Male Female (mean)
21 9 24.47
Previous on-line shopping experience
Visited electronic stores before
Purchase at electronic stores before
In the experiment, participants were asked
to visit all three electronic bookstores for at least
five minutes each. To ensure that they actually
visited all stores, they were asked to find the
price of a designated book at each store. After
visiting all stores, they were asked to buy two
items of their choice from the stores. So, there
were a total of 60 items been purchased. A
questionnaire was used to collect three kinds of
information from the subjects: their background,
Table 4. Reasons for purchase at certain stores
Design
First item 14
Second item 15
Total 29
Then the subjects were asked to assess the
relative importance of the functional
requirements listed in Table 1. Each factor was
designed as a 5-point Likert-scale question, with
1 being very undesirable and 5 being very
desirable. The result, as shown in Table 5,
indicates that protecting transaction security
(mean =4.90), providing search engines (4.87),
allowing for product return (4.77), order tracking
(4.73), and good product organization (4.60) are
the top five factors considered very desirable
features for electronic stores. The Kendall’s W
test indicates that the subjects’ assessment was
consistent (Kendall’s W=0.585, p=0.000). The
Duncan’s multiple range test divides these
factors into four levels: very desirable (>=4.5),
desirable (>=4.0), somewhat desirable (>=3.0),
and somewhat undesirable (<3.0). It is
interesting to see that hygiene factors are ranked
pretty high (three out of the top five concerns)
when subjects think of purchasing on-line. An
ANOVA test indicates that the desire levels of
these factors are significantly different. The
hygiene factors were ranked the highest (mean =
4.520), the motivators were the second (4.476),
and media richness factors were the last (3.553).
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WWW Experience (month)
<3 3-6 6-12 >12
2 4 2 22
Yes No
25 5
8 22
design factors considered important to store
design by them, and factors that actually affected
their purchase decisions.
3.2 Results
(1) Desirable functions for electronic stores
When the subjects were asked about what
attracted them to go to certain stores to buy their
items, store design was cited as the most
important one. Price was the second. Table 4
shows the frequencies of the cited reasons.
Major reasons
Price Reputation Special needs
12 11 7
14 6 3
26 17 10
The least square difference (LSD) pairwise
multiple comparison indicates that the difference
between hygiene factors and motivators is not
statistically significant, but they are both
significantly more desirable than the media
richness factors (P<.01). This is understandable
because most consumers would like to reduce
risks when they are involved in a new type of
transactions.
(2) Design quality of the stores
Both consumers and three experts were
asked to assess the design quality. The subjects
were asked to assess the design quality of three
stores on a 5-point Likert Scale, with 1 to be the
worst and 5 to be the best. The result indicates
that Kingston was the best (mean = 3.80), Books
was second (mean = 3.57), and Sanmin was the
worst (mean = 2.73). An ANOVA analysis
shows that their designs were significantly
different (F= 12.817, p=0.00). The LSD
multiple comparison indicates that the difference
between Kingston and Books is insignificant, but
Sanmin is significantly worse than Kingston and
Books.
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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

Table 5. Assessment of Different Functional Requirements

Very Desirable Desirable
Item Mean Type Item Mean Type
Security 4.90 H Credit card payment 4.43 M
Search engine 4.87 M Price comparison 4.37 R
product returns 4.77 H Service phone 4.33 H
Product tracking 4.73 H VIP membership 4.03 R
Product organization 4.60 R Substitute suggestion 4.03 R
Guiding routes 4.60 R POP 4.00 R
Easy to register 4.60 M Customized information 3.97 R
Shopping carts 4.60 M
Home delivery 4.53 M
Order on-line 4.50 M
Multiple payment 4.47 R
Somewhat Desirable Somewhat undesirable
Consistent style 3.87 H Customer interaction 2.70 R
On-line sales person 3.80 R Special effect 2.67 R
Value-added infor. 3.63 R Auction 2.67 R
Buyer clubs 3.40 R Chat room 2.60 R
On-line broadcasting 2.43 R
Visitor number 2.43 R
Note: H = hygiene factors, M= motivators, R= media richness factors

In the expert assessment, three experts
were asked to perform an itemized evaluation on
the quality of the stores. Seventeen factors
considered very desirable or desirable for
electronic stores (the mean was higher than 4.0)
by the experimental subjects were given to the
experts as criteria for examining the quality of a
particular store. They first assessed the relative
importance of the functions on a 5 point scale,
and then compared the quality of the three stores
in each function and gave a score from 1 to 5.
The total score is the weighted sum of scores on
individual items. Therefore, the maximum score
a store can get from an expert is 425 (5*5*17).
The result is consistent to the consumer’s
assessment. That is, Kingston and Books were
significantly better than Sanmin.
If we choose only the top five quality
factors to recalculate expert assessments, then
the difference between Kingston and Books
becomes significant. Therefore, our hypotheses
suggest that the actual purchase, willingness to
visit in the future and willingness to purchase
again in the future should be the highest for
Kingston, second for Books, and the lowest for
Sanmin.
(3) Effect of design quality on consumer choice
Consumer choice is measured in (1) their
actual purchase during the experiment, (2) their
willingness to visit again in the future, and (3)
their willingness to purchase again in the future.
In the experiment, Kingston had 48.3 percent (29
out of the 60), Books had 36.7% (22 out of 60),
and Sanmin had 15% (9 out of 60) of the actual
purchase. Result from a Chi-square test shows
that the difference is statistically significant at
less than 1% level (p=0.0058). Those who
ranked Kingston’s design to be the best
purchased 21 items at Kingston and 9 items at
Books. Those who ranked Books to be the best
purchased 8 items at Kingston, 12 items at
Books, and 2 items at Sanmin. The Chi-square
test shows a statistical significant level of 0.021.
That is, hypothesis H1 was supported and
consumers tend to purchase more at better-
designed electronic stores.
The consumer’s willingness to visit the
store in the future was also the highest for
Kingston (mean=3.80, with 3 being neutral and 4
being likely), second for Books (mean = 3.53),
and the lowest for Sanmin (mean=2.97, between
unlikely to neutral). The ANOVA results show
that their difference is very significant (F=5.234,
p=0.007). The LSD pairwise comparison shows
that the difference between Kingston and Books
is insignificant, but Sanmin is significantly
worse. The result indicates that H2 was
supported and consumers are more likely to
return for more visits if the store is better
designed.
The consumer’s willingness to purchase
again in the future was also the highest for
Kingston (mean = 3.53 with 3 being neutral and
4 being likely), second for Books (mean=3.20)
and the lowest for Sanmin (mean = 2.73). The
ANOVA results show that the difference is very
significant (F=4.879, p=0.010). The LSD
pairwise comparison shows that the difference

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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

between Kingston and Books is insignificant, but
Sanmin is significantly worse. Hence, H3 was
supported that consumers are more likely to
return for future purchase if the store is better
designed.
(4) Factors affecting consumer choice
Given that the design of electronic has a
significant effect on consumer choice, we would
like to know what are the factors that made a
consumer to choose a certain store. The subjects
were asked to report the actual reasons among
the quality factors that caused them to buy the
items from selected stores. A subject may cite
more than one factor. The resulting factor ranks
(in Table 6) are quite different from the ranks in
Table 5.

Table 6. Factors affecting consumer choice

Factor Type Freq Rank Rank (T5) Change
Order on-line M 46 1 10 9
Search engine M 44 2 2 0
Easy to register M 41 3 5 2
Product organization R 37 4 5 1
Home delivery M 35 5 9 4
Credit card payment M 35 5 12 7
Security H 27 7 1 -6
Guiding routes R 26 8 5 -3
Shopping carts M 24 9 5 -4
Consistent style H 24 9 19 10
Multiple payment R 23 11 11 0
Product tracking H 16 12 4 -8
VIP membership R 15 13 15 -2
product returns H 13 14 3 -11
Service phone H 12 15 14 -1
POP R 6 17 17 0
Customized information R 6 17 18 1
Value-added information R 3 19 21 3
Buyer clubs R 1 20 23 3
Special effect R 0 21 24 4
Price comparison R N/A N/A 13 N/A
Substitute suggestion R N/A N/A 15 N/A
On-line sales person R N/A N/A 20 N/A
Customer interaction R N/A N/A 23 N/A
Auction R N/A N/A 25 N/A
Chat room R N/A N/A 26 N/A
On-line broadcasting R N/A N/A 27 N/A
Visitor number R N/A N/A 27 N/A
Note: H = hygiene factors, M= motivators, R= media richness factors; N/A = functions not available at
the stores for evaluation at the time of experiment.

In general, we can see that motivators
move up significantly, media richness factors
also move up, while hygiene factors move down
significantly on the list. Among the changes,
allowing merchandise return is down by 11
(from 3 to 14), tracking orders down by 8 (from
4 to 12), good security down by 6 (from 1 to 7).
The only hygiene factor that moves up is
consistent designing style (from 19 to 9). The
ANOVA analysis shows that motivators are
significantly more influential than hygiene and
media richness factors (see Table 7), when
consumers actually choose an electronic store to
purchase.

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 Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000
Table 7. Relative importance of design factors
(a) ANOVA
Stores Hygiene Motivators
Mean 18.40 33.57
St.Dev. 6.73 12.71
(b) LSD Comparison
H-M
Mean difference -15.171*
Prob. 0.042
Note: H = hygiene factors, M= motivators, R= media richness factors
4. Concluding Remarks
In summary, the paper has examined the
effect of design quality on consumer choice of
electronic stores. We have proposed a theory
that divides design factors into three groups:
motivators, hygiene factors, and media richness
factors. Motivators provide convenience,
hygiene factors reduce process risks, whereas
media richness factors enhance communication
and information channels. From the empirical
result, the following preliminary conclusions can
be derived.
First, design quality has significant impacts
on consumer choice of electronic stores.
Consumers are more likely to visit and purchase
at well-designed stores repeatedly. On the five-
point Likert scale, the consumer’s willingness to
visit again is higher than the willingness to
purchase again (average scores across all three
stores are 3.444 for future visit, vis-a-vis 3.155
for future purchase). This is not unexpected,
because there is often a gap between visit and
actual purchase.
Second, when consumers think of
electronic stores, they desire that the store
provide functions to reduce their potential risks
in this new type of transactions. They rank
security as the most important function that
electronic commerce must provide. This is
consistent to the findings in Liang and Huang
(1999), which indicates that uncertainty is a
major factor affecting consumer’s intention to
use electronic channels.
In the actual purchase decision, however,
they would go to stores that provide better
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0-7695-0493-0/00 $10.00 (c) 2000 IEEE
Richness F value Prob.
13.00 6.15** 0.009
13.03
H-R M-R
5.40 20.571**
0.423 0.003
support of the transaction process, such as
allowing them to order on-line easily and having
effective search engines to make the transaction
process easier. Media richness factors are not as
effective as many think they would be in
electronic commerce. This is consistent to the
findings of Westland and Au (1998) that fancy
interface does not have a significant effect on
profits or sales. Therefore, when things are
coming to business, people think of real benefits,
not the hype. If electronic stores cannot provide
adequate hygiene factors, consumers probably
won’t go electronically. If an electronic store
does not have good support of the transaction
process, then consumers won’t buy there.
A major implication from the observation
is that customers will go electronic once they
have adequate understanding of the risks they
involved. For competing among electronic
stores, motivators are the keys for creating
advantages. The factors identified in the paper
are useful for those who are running electronic
stores. They can use the factors as evaluation
criteria for their stores.
The research is focused more on the
functional level of design. We did not touch
much about design methods or any details in
store design. The stores chosen in the study
were bookstores, which is very popular in
business-to-consumer electronic commerce. In
future works, the research can certainly be
extended to other industries or other types of
electronic commerce. Although different factors
may be identified, we believe that the same
theory also applies.
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