Alex Ivanov

The role of social presence in establishing loyalty in e-Service environments

Compared to offline shopping, the online shopping experience may be viewed as lacking human warmth and sociability as it is more impersonal, anonymous, automated and generally devoid of face-to-face interactions. Thus, understanding how to create customer loyalty in online environments (e-Loyalty) is a complex process. In this paper a model for e-Loyalty is proposed and used to examine how varied conditions of social presence in a B2C e-Services context influence e-Loyalty and its antecedents of perceived usefulness, trust and enjoyment. This model is examined through an empirical study involving 185 subjects using structural equation modeling techniques. Further analysis is conducted to reveal gender differences concerning hedonic elements in the model on e-Loyalty.

Perceived interactivity leading to e-loyalty: Development of a model for cognitive-affective user responses

Novel applications of website interactivity are important to attract and retain online users. In this empirical study five designs for interactivity are examined using different web-poll interfaces. The goal of the investigation is to examine perceived interactivity in a model which includes most commonly tested cognitive elements such as efficiency and effectiveness, but augments this model with the inclusion of a cognitive-affective element for trust, and an affective element of enjoyment. More specifically, a model is created to validate the relationship of perceived interactivity (comprised of user control, user connectedness, and responsiveness of the web-poll application) to efficiency, effectiveness, trust and enjoyment, of the website. In turn, efficiency, effectiveness, trust, and enjoyment are tested for their influence on user behavioral intentions for e-loyalty. All relationships in the model are supported. In addition, exploratory evaluation of qualitative comments is conducted to investigate additional insights between the five web-poll treatments in this investigation. The research confirms the complexity of a model in which cognitive, cognitive-affective and affective elements are present, and advances knowledge on the consequences of perceived interactivity. In additional to theoretical advancements, the research has merit for web designers and online marketers regarding how to enhance interactive online web applications.

Satisfaction with outcome and process from web-based meetings for idea generation and selection: The roles of instrumentality, enjoyment, and interface design

Abstract This study examines individual group member satisfaction with outcome and process from an idea generation and selection task via a Group Support System. 126 Participants formed 20 virtual teams, each completing a 20 minute task, followed by a questionnaire about their experience. The study validated a proposed scale for a new construct and tested several hypotheses using a structural equation model. While the new construct of perceived instrumentality did not directly influence satisfaction with outcome, satisfaction with process was significantly influenced by perceived task enjoyment and interface design aesthetics. Scholars of GSS meeting satisfaction are therefore advised to include hedonic constructs in their research models. The study’s qualitative data also indicated that a GSS designed to support evaluability within the group could lead to increased satisfaction with process within the majority of group members.

The Concept Plot: a concept mapping visualization tool for asynchronous web-based brainstorming sessions

Electronic brainstorming systems have been shown to lead to more ideas, yet unsupported face-to-face brainstorming is still widely preferred. This paper proposes a graphical user interface for a web-based system for design problem-solving or other intellective tasks involving convergent and divergent thinking. Referring to the literature on group support systems and information and knowledge visualization, the study extends features of concept mapping and synthesizes these into a prototype called the Concept Plot (CP). Based on an advertising design task, the paper shows how the CP can be collaboratively constructed in two directions, as text and pictures are uploaded onto nodes, and these nodes scaled up or down as users click to evaluate ideas. The expectation is that this integrated visualization would diminish information overload, while enhancing the social dynamics of the process. Also presented is the pilot deployment of a Flash prototype. The results were inconclusive, yet promising that a study with more participants might demonstrate the functional and affective benefits of the CP.

The Plot-poll Redesigned: Lessons from the Deployment of a Collective Mood-tracker in an Online Support Group

The study described in this paper extends our earlier work on improving the user experience in online support groups via embedding social knowledge visualization interfaces. A real online support group was created for the purpose of testing a web-poll mood tracker for 16 weeks. We describe the design and deployment of both 2005 and current plot-polls, and conclude with the mixed results from our qualitative investigation, which yielded useful recommendations for future research.

Effects of visualizing participant contribution in electronic brainstorming

The adoption of Electronic Brainstorming (EBS) in organizations has been sluggish, despite evidence that it increases productivity by features such as parallel and anonymous input of ideas. To understand if acceptance levels of such Group Support Systems (GSS) can be increased, my thesis looks beyond productivity and anonymity—at affective aspects of group collaboration. LotusNotes, for instance, was not well accepted in a consultancy due to lack of incentive to share one’s best ideas if they were going to be seen as common property. On the other end of the spectrum, brainstorming sessions at the design firm IDEO serve as ‘prestige auctions’ among employees, whose status is affected by reactions within the group. While such explicit evaluability is not the point of EBS, complete anonymity on the other hand, has been known to decrease participant satisfaction. Briggs, Reinig, and deVreede [1] define Meeting Satisfaction as an “affective arousal with a positive valance on the part of a participant with respect to the outcomes or process used in a meeting.” My thesis applies this theory, drawing from social psychology and information visualization. Despite compelling work by Erickson and Kellogg [2] on social translucence in digital systems, the value of social visualization in collaboration technology has yet to be realized. The user interface of the most popular system on the market and in the labs, GroupSystems.com, is mostly based on text, tables and Excel-style charts. My research question, therefore, boils down to: Can social visualization increase participant satisfaction in EBS? I expect, for instance, that perceived indispensability of one’s contribution towards the group goal to be positively related with participant satisfaction. An experiment with 150 students was conducted in April, deploying two treatments of my EBS interface in a number of distributed and synchronous sessions in groups of nine. Figure 1 shows the richer treatment of the interface, which allowed participants to upload images alongside text as their ideas. In addition, it displayed the authorship of each vote by plotting each user icon (die) inside a grid. (The leaner treatment did not support image uploading, and did not identify the votes.) Data analysis is currently in progress, but user reports show a positive affective response from the dice icons and the voting visualization. As well, the majority of participants enjoyed and managed to easily upload images, which they found on Google in seconds.