The influence of equivocality in purchasing tasks on the selection of transaction channels in online auctions

Abstract

Online auctions are one of the most active business models used in electronic commerce. Previous researchers address issues of online auction behaviour focusing on the factors influencing bidding intentions, but how bidders choose transaction channels to complete the consumption process is not examined before. This study conducts an experiment to manipulate the equivocality of purchasing task. Results show that when purchasing a product with higher task equivocality, bidders tend to choose a communication channel with higher information richness, and select a payment and product delivery channel with lower risk. When purchasing a product with lower task equivocality, bidders tend to select a communication channel with lower information richness, and tolerate higher risk to complete the payment and product delivery process.

Keywords:

• task equivocality
• information richness
• online auctions
• transaction channel
• perceived risk

Notes

 Information richness refers to the amount of information that can be conveyed through a communication channel (Poole et al. 1992, Purdy and Nye 2000). Communication channels may vary in terms of information richness based on four factors: (1) multiple cues, (2) immediacy of feedback, (3) language variety and (4) personalisation (Daft et al. 1987, Trevino et al. 1987, Dennis and Kinney 1998).