Impacts of Product Display Formats and Shopping Motivation on Consumers' Online Product Search
COM1 Level 2
SR3, COM1-02-12
ABSTRACT:
We investigate the effects of interface designs on consumer's approach and herd behavior on social commerce sites. Specifically, we compare two prevailing formats of product display, i.e., a matrix format vs. a waterfall format. Based on environmental psychology model and cue selection effect, we propose that product display formats influence consumer product search behavior on online social commerce platforms and the effects are further moderated by consumer's shopping motivation. We conducted an eye-tracking experiment using 120 subjects. Our empirical findings suggest that (1) the waterfall format leads to more visit time on the interface and more products viewed for consumers with recreation-oriented motivation but not for those with task-oriented motivation; in contrast, the matrix format leads to more approach behavior for consumers with task-oriented motivation but not for those with recreational motivation; (2) compared to the matrix format, the waterfall format leads consumers to pay less attention on popular product and hence reduces consumer's herd behavior; (3) the decrease in consumer's herd behavior caused by the waterfall format is more prominent for consumers with task-oriented motivation than for those with recreation-oriented motivation. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.
BIODATA:
Zhenhui (Jack) Jiang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Systems of National University of Singapore. He is Chair of SIGHCI of Association for Information Systems. He served as Assistant Dean (Graduate Studies) in NUS School of Computing. His research interests include the design and evaluation of social media, information privacy, electronic commerce, and human computer interaction. Dr. Jiang's work has been published in top Information Systems journals, such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and Journal of MIS, and top Human Computer Interaction conferences, such as CHI. He has served on the editorial board of MIS Quarterly, IEEE Transactions of Engineering Management, Journal of AIS, among others.