Contact: John D. Wells, WSU Department of Information Systems, 509/335-7112, wells@cbe.wsu.edu
WSU Researchers Explore Consumers’ Online Buying Behavior
With U.S. consumers now spending billions of dollars online each year, researchers at WSU’s College of Business, including John Wells (l) and D. Veena Parboteeah (r), are discovering that retailers can add certain features to their Web sites that enhance the ‘entertainment value ‘of the shopping experience, prompting an increase in ‘impulse buying’ and driving up the amount of money consumers are willing to spend.
PULLMAN, Wash. - With Web-based retail sales revenues growing stronger every year and expected to hit $230 billion in the United States by 2008, researchers at the Washington State University College of Business are taking a closer look at how the cyberspace shopping experience can influence consumers' online spending behavior.
Their research comes as Web-based sales revenues hit $165 billion in 2005 - a jump of more than 20 percent from the previous year - and accounted for some three percent of the nation's total retail sales during the year. Should current sales growth projections prove accurate, that percentage is expected to jump to fully ten percent of all retail sales in the U.S. within the next three years.
The research emphasis at WSU's College of Business is driven also by a growing realization within the retail industry that Web-based "storefronts," offer a complex virtual environment in which the consumers' level of involvement and engagement in the online experience can drive their purchasing decisions.
"We know that retail shopping malls create an environment in which the customer frequently makes spending decisions that are driven as much by their enjoyment of the shopping experience as by their need to purchase particular products," said John Wells, a professor in the college's Department of Information Systems. "As customers are turning more and more to the Internet to make retail purchases, one of the key questions for Web marketers has become 'what can we do to create a similarly enjoyable shopping experience online?'"
In an effort to address the question, Wells and his fellow researchers recently focused their efforts on gaining new insights into how consumer perceptions of various features of retail Web design - whether or not those features relate directly to the functionality of the site - influence the extent to which customers decide to make more online purchases than they intended.
Conducted by Wells and his colleagues, D. Veena Parboteeah and Joseph S. Valacich, the research demonstrated that certain features of the Web interface do tend to have a direct influence on the degree to which customers engage in impulsive purchases. Although the study involved only simulated purchasing decisions, the researchers discovered that particular Web features, which they call "cues," have the potential to affect not only the frequency with which customers make impulsive purchases, but the total amount they may ultimately spend on products they had not initially intended to buy.
The likely responses of 216 college undergraduates to four different configurations of a Web site for a fictitious online store, Totebags.com, were compiled in the study. Each of the study participants was presented with five purchasing options while shopping on one of the sites in an effort to assess the degree to which each participant was likely to display impulsive purchasing behavior.
"A certain level of impulse purchasing occurred regardless of the type of Web interface used in our study, and the incidence of impulsive purchasing clearly increased on the sites that displayed higher functional convenience and security," said Wells.
But adding cues that made the customers' shopping experience easier and more secure wasn't enough to capture the full potential of the tendency to make impulsive purchases, he said.
"It was only when customers were also presented with Web features that enhanced their enjoyment, or the 'entertainment value' of the shopping experience, that the highest number of respondents indicated an inclination to make unplanned purchases and spend the highest average amount of money per transaction," Wells said.
Web features intended to enhance the consumers' shopping experience vary, he said, but the most effective appear to be those which provide what the researchers call "hedonic cues." Such Web features may be inconsequential to the user's shopping goals, but they create a mood on the Web site and appeal to shoppers in a way that engages their curiosity and self interest without distracting from the actual task of shopping.
Wells cited relatively new Web features, such as one that allows consumers to construct a virtual model of themselves online and proceed to "dress themselves" with various articles of clothing and another that allows products to be customized and individualized online, as examples of how Web technologies can be used to more fully engage consumers in their shopping experience.
"For example, I recently came across a site that allows you to customize poker chips, select particular colors and designs that appeal to you - even upload your own logo and place it on the chips," he said. "Such technologies are engaging to consumers and they're also leading to the creation of products and services that weren't even available before."
Wells said that in addition to studying how technical aspects of the Web interface can affect consumers' short-term intentions, such as their inclination to make impulsive purchases, future research also will explore whether online cues can affect shoppers long-term intentions, such as their willingness to take advantage of continuing retailer services, such as subscribing to online newsletters and periodic offerings.
"We intend to further explore how technological characteristics, various online tasks and cues affect the customer relationship and lead to different types of behavior on the part of the consumer," he said.
The WSU College of Business has been ranked among the top 10 business programs at public universities in the western United States by US News and World Report. Several of its programs, schools and departments are also ranked for their excellence in the top echelons of their peers. WSU business degrees are available at WSU Vancouver and WSU Tri-Cities, and through distance degree programs.