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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Assessment of a Web Comparative Behavioural Model with an Interdisciplinary and Complexity Approach

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description

E-commerce has transformed the way in which consumers and vendors interact, changing how consumers make decisions (Steckel et al., 2005). Economic theory assumes that, despite the easy online access to a myriad of information, consumers will keep searching for information as long as the perceived benefit from doing so is larger than the cost involved (Jepsen, 2007). Despite the vast amount of commerce-related information, consumers value convenience when searching for product and services online. However Oorni (2005) found that when searching for travel packages, consumers were even willing to pay more when the effort to be made was too large. When designing Web sites, marketers typically encounter a contradiction regarding how long they should try to retain consumers on their Web sites. On one hand online companies want to design easy to use shopping Web sites so that they can retain consumer as long as possible, hence exposing them to more product information. On the other hand making consumers exert increased effort might put them off and bore them, leading to abandoning the site (Hong, Thong, & Tam, 2005).