Tom Stafford

Determining Uses and Gratifications for the Internet

Uses and gratifications (U&G) is a media use paradigm from mass communications research that guides the assessment of consumer motivations for media usage and access. It has been used previously in research and decision making related to the promotion of emerging radio and television media. Recent adaptations of U&G research to the Internet are incomplete and have not identified important new Internet-specific gratifications. This paper empirically derives dimensions of consumer Internet use and usage gratifications among customers of a prominent Internet Service Provider (ISP). Results describe three key dimensions related to consumer use of the Internet, including process and content gratifications as previously found in studies of television, as well as an entirely new social gratification that is unique to Internet use. All three dimensions of gratification are relevant to managing the Internet as a commercial medium, and measures developed from the gratification profiles identified here can serve as trait-valid scales in future Internet and e-commerce research.

A Contingency Approach: The Effects of Spokesperson Type and Service Type on Service Advertising Perceptions

Abstract Recent growth in the U.S. economy has been in the service sectors, and increased understanding of the marketing and advertising of services is critical to sustaining this growth. This paper investigates issues related to the advertising of common retail services. Results from an empirical study into the relative effectiveness of four types of spokespersons for a hedonic and a utilitarian retail service indicate that a created character fits well with the hedonic service but not with the utilitarian service. The celebrity spokesperson performed well for both types of services, but effects varied across service type. The hypothesized contingency relationship between spokesperson type and service type was supported.

Perceived critical mass and the adoption of a communication technology

Computer-based communication technologies are increasingly important to personal and organizational communication. One important factor related to the adoption and diffusion of communication innovations is critical mass. Critical mass influences the adoption and diffusion of interactive communication innovations, both through network externalities and through sustainability of the innovation. Unfortunately, critical mass is difficult to measure and is typically only demonstrable after the critical mass point has been reached. Potential adopters’ perceptions of critical mass also may be important to adoption decisions. In this paper, we extend this thinking using a synthesis of the Theory of Reasoned Action and Diffusion of Innovation theory by developing a research model. The model is empirically tested using survey data that are analyzed using partial least squares. The focal innovation is instant messaging. Results indicate that perceived critical mass influences use intentions directly and through perceptions of the characteristics of the innovation. The perceived innovation characteristics impact attitude toward use, which in turn impacts use intentions. The model predicts a sizable and significant portion of both attitudes and use intentions. Further, perceived critical mass is able to explain a significant portion of the variance in each perceived innovation characteristic. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Identifying Motivations for the Use of Commercial Web Sites

The uses and gratifications theoretical framework has continued to prove useful in the study of new and emerging media. In previous research on television as a medium, motivations for media use have been grouped into either process gratifications motivations associated with using the medium, like channel surfing or content gratifications motivations related to information or entertainment delivered by the medium, like watching the evening news for information. This study applies the uses and gratifications perspective to better understand the factors motivating commercial Web site use, and identifies a new media use gratification unique to the Internet: socialization using the medium to communicate with people. Through the cooperation of two major on-line companies, this research reports the results of a two-part study that begins with the identification of 179 motivations for Web use and subsequently reduces those to five primary underlying factors. These factors are discussed and related to three key indicators: frequency of Web use, frequency of computer use, and affinity with the computer. Implications for new social gratifications for Internet use are discussed, and directions for future research are proposed.

Mobile commerce: what it is and what it could be

claimed that m-commerce had arrived, and would shortly provide unprecedented commercial functionality to the masses [2, 5]. Cell phone users were expected to be routinely accessing data online [5], and speedy third-generation cellular standards would soon solve associated bandwidth difficulties [2]. It hasn’t quite worked out that way—it sometimes takes the passage of a few years to see how rationality and market economics can skewer technological predictions [4]. Now, with hindsight, we can review what we once thought m-commerce might be, and consider its present and future. M-commerce is not always, strictly speaking, classical e-commerce. The idea of e-commerce is widely understood and there is also a certain agreement on what m-commerce is at a basic level, since the “m” in the name is self-evident. Both modalities are computer-assisted and network-enabled, so what are the differences? While each of the two shares aspects of the other, each also possesses unique characteristics that tend to define its state and functionality.

Determinants of service quality and satisfaction in the auto casualty claims process

The insurance industry has placed increased emphasis on service quality and customer satisfaction as companies seek to compete with generally undifferentiated products. This attention to customer service dictates that insurers understand exactly what elements individuals use to assess their providers’ performance. This study examines the most significant dimensions of service quality and customer satisfaction across four large companies in the auto casualty industry, using the familiar SERVQUAL instrument. Results indicate that reliability is consistently the most important determinant of both perceived service quality and feelings of satisfaction among customers engaged in auto insurance claims. Implications for auto insurance providers are discussed.

International and Cross-Cultural Influences on Online Shopping Behavior

Abstract This paper compares and contrasts the differences of gender on online shopping in three distinctive consumer markets: the United States, Finland and Turkey. These nations span the present range of cultural differences in the online world: developed nations, emerging technological niches, and emerging markets in the secular East; comparisons can also be made between free market capitalism, European centralized planning and social consciousness, and the emerging consumerism of secular Moslem society. Our intent is to discern likely gender and age differences between these three areas of the world that might bep redictive of differences in online s hopping activities.

Connectionist Simulation of Attitude Learning: Asymmetries in the Acquisition of Positive and Negative Evaluations

Connectionist computer simulation was employed to explore the notion that, if attitudes guide approach and avoidance behaviors, false negative beliefs are likely to remain uncorrected for longer than false positive beliefs. In Study 1, the authors trained a three-layer neural network to discriminate “good” and “bad” inputs distributed across a two-dimensional space. “Full feedback” training, whereby connection weights were modified to reduce error after every trial, resulted in perfect discrimination. “Contingent feedback,” whereby connection weights were only updated following outputs representing approach behavior, led to several false negative errors (good inputs misclassified as bad). In Study 2, the network was redesigned to distinguish a system for learning evaluations from a mechanism for selecting actions. Biasing action selection toward approach eliminated the asymmetry between learning of good and bad inputs under contingent feedback. Implications for various attitudinal phenomena and biases in social cognition are discussed.

Tracing the Trajectory of Skill Learning With a Very Large Sample of Online Game Players

In the present study, we analyzed data from a very large sample (N = 854,064) of players of an online game involving rapid perception, decision making, and motor responding. Use of game data allowed us to connect, for the first time, rich details of training history with measures of performance from participants engaged for a sustained amount of time in effortful practice. We showed that lawful relations exist between practice amount and subsequent performance, and between practice spacing and subsequent performance. Our methodology allowed an in situ confirmation of results long established in the experimental literature on skill acquisition. Additionally, we showed that greater initial variation in performance is linked to higher subsequent performance, a result we link to the exploration/exploitation trade-off from the computational framework of reinforcement learning. We discuss the benefits and opportunities of behavioral data sets with very large sample sizes and suggest that this approach could be particularly fecund for studies of skill acquisition.

Consumption Values and the Choice of Marketing Electives: Treating Students Like Customers

In all of academe, educators in marketing should be best suited to a customer orientation. Customer-oriented marketing education might include an effort to better understand the values students derive from the services they receive, in order to aid in the diagnosis of choice behavior. The Theory of Consumption Values is presented as a conceptual framework to aid in understanding the values considered by students when evaluating course choices. A demonstration of the use of this theory to diagnose such choices is then provided. Results indicate that, among five specific consumption values (Conditional, Emotional, Epistemic, Functional, and Social), the choice of a course in customer behavior is predominantly driven by the desire for variety (the Epistemic value) and scheduling imperatives (the Conditional value).