Effects of e-Commerce Websites' Auditory Features on Consumers' Evaluation of Innovative Products
COM2 Level 2
MR3, COM2-02-26
Supervisor: Professor Teo Hock Hai
Evaluators: Assoc Prof Leonard Lee, Assoc Prof Tan Chuan Hoo
ABSTRACT:
It has been established that sensory interactions, including sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, can affect consumers' product evaluations and consumption decisions. While various sensory interactions could be devised and deployed in the offline context, e-commerce has to rely primarily on vision and hearing due to its inability to access other sensory channels. Previous IS literature has documented the substantial effects of various visual features. However, very few studies have examined auditory features. These limited studies mainly posit that website auditory features induce arousal and distraction with both positive and negative effects, and thus should be used with care and control. Drawing on the recent observation that medium noises enhance people's abstractive thinking and creativity (the creativity-under-distraction effect), this study tries to investigate this topic from a novel perspective that the website background music can promote users' appreciation of innovative products when they are shopping online. The preliminary results of a lab experiment show that medium website background music can improve participants' likelihood of buying innovative products over traditional products. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.