Effects of interaction richness on consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions in e-commerce: some experimental results

Abstract

A variety of information and communication media have been employed to support the interaction of consumers with products and sales representatives in electronic-commerce (EC). But, the question of what impact those media have on consumers in EC has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the richness of consumers’ interaction with products and with sales representatives on changes in their attitude towards and their intention to use business-to-consumer (B2C) EC. Controlled lab experiments were conducted using two types of products and multiple levels of interaction richness. The results show that interaction richness has positive impact on consumers’ attitude towards B2C EC. Additionally, the study finds that the impact is stronger in the case of purchasing a high-complexity product than a low-complexity product, and that consumers’ attitude change is positively related with their intention to use B2C EC. Differential effects on two facets of attitude, ease of use in accomplishing the tasks and usefulness were observed leading to interesting implications and future research directions.

Keywords:

• change in attitude
• usefulness
• ease of use
• intention to accept and use
• electronic commerce
• interaction richness

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Institute of Management Research at Seoul National University.

Notes

1 where R_D is the reliability of the ‘difference score’ (in this case, change in attitude on ‘ease of use’ and ‘usefulness’ dimensions), r₁₁ and r₂₂ are the reliabilities of the first and second component scores (in this case, e.g., ‘Pre’ and ‘Post’ attitude for each of ‘ease of use’ and ‘usefulness’ dimensions), σ ₁² and σ ₂² are the variances of these scores and r₁₂ is the correlation between these component scores (Johns, 1981). Note that reliability (Cronbach α) of the difference scores is always bound to be lesser than those of the original components and often tends to attenuate difference measure's relationships with other variables, ‘consumer intentions’ in this study (Brown et al. 1993).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jungjoo Jahng

About the authors

Jungjoo (JJ) Jahng is an associate professor of information systems in the College of Business Administration, Seoul National University (SNU), Seoul, Korea. Prior to joining SNU, he was a faculty member of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, U.S.A. He received the B.S. degree in business administration and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, and the Ph.D. degree in management information systems from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, U.S.A. His research interests are in the domains of electronic commerce, IS strategy and IT-based innovation. His research has appeared in a number of journals such as IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, European Journal of Information Systems, E-Services Journal and in refereed conference proceedings such as the Association for Information Systems Conference (AMCIS). He had the privilege of being one of the few accepted nationally as a doctoral consortium candidate in both AIS 1999 Conference as well as International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS-99), which is the premier conference for IS researchers and professionals. He also has a number of years of real-world systems experience in South Korea. Dr. Jahng won the first Stafford Beer Award in 2004 for his 2002 paper that appeared in the European Journal of Information Systems. One of his research papers was also nominated as one of the best papers in the AMCIS1999 Conference.

Hemant Jain

Hemant K. Jain received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Indore, Indore, India, the M.Tech. degree in industrial engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India and the Ph.D. degree in information systems from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, in 1981. He is a Wisconsin Distinguished and Tata Consultancy Services Professor of management information system in the School of Business Administration, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. His research interests are in the area of electronic commerce, systems development using reusable components and web services, distributed and cooperative computing systems, architecture design, database management and data warehousing. He serves as a Consultant for a number of Fortune 500 companies. He has published over 50 articles in leading journals like Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Journal of MIS, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Naval Research Quarterly, Decision Sciences, Decision Support Systems, Communications of the ACM and Information and Management. Additionally, he has published over 40 papers in refereed conference proceedings. He is an associate editor of Information Systems Research, which is a flagship journal of INFORMS. He also serves on the editorial board of Information Technology and Management, International Journal of Web Services Research, Information Management and the International Journal of Information Technology and Decision Making. Dr. Jain is on the board and a member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE Technical Community for Services Computing, and is also a member of the Service, Systems and Organizations Technical Committee of the IEEE SMC Society. He was the program committee co-chair of the 2004 IEEE Conference on web services. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society.

Keshavamurthy Ramamurthy

K. Ramamurthy is a professor of management information systems in the School of Business Administration, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He received his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Madras, India, graduate diploma in statistical quality control and operations research from Indian Statistical Institute, India, MBA from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada and the Ph.D. degree in management information systems from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. He has nearly 20 years of industry experience and has held several senior technical and executive positions. His current research interests include electronic commerce including inter-organizational systems/electronic data interchange (EDI) and the internet; adoption, implementation and diffusion of modern information technologies; business value of IT; strategic IS planning; data warehousing and data resource management; decision and knowledge systems for individual and group support; total quality management (TQM) including software quality; and computer integrated manufacturing technologies. He has published over 35 articles in major scholarly journals including MIS Quarterly; Journal of MIS; Decision Sciences; IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering; IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics; Decision Support Systems; European Journal of Information Systems; International Journal of Electronic Commerce; IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management; Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce; International Journal of Human-Computer Studies; Journal of International Marketing; International Journal of Production Research; International Journal of Man–Machine Studies; OMEGA; Transportation Journal; INFOR and over 20 articles in a number of refereed conference proceedings. He is an associate editor for MIS Quarterly, the flagship journal of MIS. He is a charter member of Association for Information Systems (AIS), and elected to Beta, Gamma and Sigma honor society.