Valerie Trifts

Information Availability and Consumer Preference: Can Online Retailers Benefit From Providing Access to Competitor Price Information?

Internet shopping (or e-shopping) is emerging as a shopping mode and with its requirement of computer access and use, it is interesting to find out whether consumers associate e-shop-pers with any gender-specific stereotypes. Such stereotypes may be expected because shopping is considered a “female typed” activity whereas technology is considered to be in the male domain. In this article, we address this central question in an empirical study that varies the shopping context in terms of outlet type, product type, and purchase purpose. The respondents are college students with Internet access and familiarity with online shopping. The experimental results suggest that the global stereotype, held by both male and female respondents, is that of a shopper as a woman. This stereotype reverses when the product purchased is technical and expensive (DVD player). In terms of personality attributions, the female shopper is seen to be less technical, less spontaneous, and more reliable and attributions regarding personal characteristics are not influenced significantly by product type, outlet type, or purchase purpose.This article examines consumers’ intention to shop online during the information acquisition stage. Specifically, the study incorporates 3 essential variables, which are likely to influence consumer intentions: (a) convenience characteristic of shopping channels, (b) product type characteristics, and (c) perceived price of the product. Results indicate that convenience and product type influence consumer intention to engage in online shopping. When consumers perceive offline shopping as inconvenient, their intention to shop online is greater. Also, online shopping intention is higher when consumers perceive the product to be search goods than experience goods.The rapid growth of the Internet as an information medium has given rise to “infomediaries” that help aid consumers in making decisions. Recent research in the context of recommendation agents has shown that their use can lead to increases in consumer welfare. However, it is not clear if this varies by customer and by type of product. In this article, the role of category risk, product complexity, and customer category knowledge in moderating the impact of recommendation agents on consumer welfare is examined. A controlled experiment simulating a recommendation agent was used in conducting this study. Various product characteristics for which the recommendation agent provided information were manipulated. The results support some of the hypothesized effects. It is shown that category risk moderates the impact of recommendation agents on decision quality and product complexity moderates the role of recommendation agents on amount of search. The implications of this for theory and research on the Internet are discussed.This article examines consumers’ reactions to the provision of direct access to uncensored competitor price information within an electronic store. Based on notions derived from signaling theory, prior research on trust, and attribution theory, we propose that the facilitation of such access may have a positive impact on consumer preference for an online retailer. Furthermore, we predict that this effect will be moderated by how attractive a vendors prices are. The results of a laboratory experiment demonstrate the possibility that a retailers act of providing access to uncensored competitor price information may result in enhanced long-term preference for that vendor, especially if the latters prices are neither clearly superior nor obviously inferior to those of its competitors. Finally, this positive effect of facilitating access to competitors’ prices on consumer preference is mediated by the perceived trustworthiness of the online retailer.In this article we examine the effect of language, graphics, and culture on bilingual consumers’ Web site and product evaluations. We extend previous bilingual memory research to affective responses and to a new medium—the Internet. A series of studies suggests that attitudinal measures are influenced by the interaction of Web site language with two types of congruity: graphic congruity and cultural congruity. We conclude from our findings that both types of congruity influence bilinguals attitude-formation processes.Advances in information technology are making it possible to deliver multisensory stimuli over the Internet, giving rise to what we call second-generation electronic commerce, and to Web-based exchanges that approach in-store episodes and greatly exceed existing mass-market media in experiential richness. Delivery of multisensory stimuli is not enough, however, to fully activate, generate, and manage the embodied knowledge that is critical to consumer thinking about many types of products and services. Embodied knowledge refers to information elements that are generated and maintained outside the brain cavity and that are incorporated into consumer assessments of products and services. The view that consumers integrate embodied and conceptual knowledge into mental simulations of products and services is used as a foundation for a more general exposition of embodied knowledge and cognition. Three elements of embodied knowledge—body mapping and monitoring systems, proprioceptive knowledge, and body boundaries—are discussed, including their implications for e-commerce theory and practice and for marketing research in general. The methodological challenges of better understanding and managing embodied knowledge are also discussedConsumers often search the Internet for agent advice when making decisions about products and services. Existing research on this topic suggests that past opinion agreement between the consumer and an agent is an important cue in consumers’ acceptance of current agent advice. In this article, we report the results of two experiments which show that different types of past agreements can have different effects on the acceptance of current agent advice. In Study 1, we show that in addition to the overall agreement rate, consumers pay special attention to extreme opinion agreement when assessing agent diagnosticity (i.e., extremity effect). In Study 2 we show that positive extreme agreement is more influential than negative extreme agreement when advice valence is positive, but the converse does not hold when advice valence is negative (i.e., positivity effect). We conclude by identifying promising avenues for future research and discuss implications of the results for marketers in areas such as design of intelligent online recommendation systems and word-of-mouth management on the Internet.When consumers use computers to help make purchase decisions, how do they attribute responsibility for the positive or negative outcomes of those decisions? The results suggest that, in general, attributions of responsibility reflect a self-serving bias: Consumers tend to blame computers for negative outcomes and tend to take personal credit for positive ones. However, the results also suggest that, when consumers have a history of intimate self-disclosure with a computer, this pattern of attribution is significantly mitigated: Consumers are more willing to credit the computer for positive outcomes, and are more willing to accept responsibility for negative outcomes. In addition, this research provides evidence that the causal relation between self-disclosure and attributions of responsibility is partially mediated by attraction.In the context of online shopping, a major change in the consumer decision-making cognitive process is the partial shift of effort from consumers to electronic decision aids. The objective of this article is to investigate consumers’ perception of the “effort” expended by decision aids and how this perception influences their satisfaction with the decision process. The findings of two laboratory experiments show that, in comparison to human decision aids, consumers believe that electronic aids exert less effort but save them an equal level of effort. It is also shown that consumers’ satisfaction with the search process is positively associated with their perception of effort saved for them by electronic aids.Recently, it has been proposed that creating compelling experiences in the distinctive consumption environment defined by the Internet depends on facilitating a state of flow. Although it has been established that consumers do, in fact, experience flow while using the Web, consumer researchers do not as yet have a comprehensive understanding of the specific activities during which consumers actually have these experiences. One fruitful focus of research on online consumer experience has been on two distinct categories of consumption behavior— goal directed and experiential consumption behavior. Drawing distinctions between these behaviors for the Web may be particularly important because the experiential process is, for many individuals, as or even more important than the final instrumental result. However, the general and broad nature of flow measurement to date has precluded a precise investigation of flow during goal-directed versus experiential activities. In this article, we explore this issue, investigating whether flow occurs during both experiential and goal-directed activities, if experiential and goal-directed flow states differ in terms of underlying constructs, and what the key characteristics are—based on prior theory—that define “types” of flow experiences reported on the Web. Our approach is to perform a series of quantitative analyses of qualitative descriptions of flow experiences provided by Web users collected in conjunction with the 10th GVU WWW User Survey. In contrast with previous research that suggests flow would be more likely to occur during recreational activities than task-oriented activities, we found more evidence of flow for task-oriented rather than experiential activities, although there is evidence flow occurs under both scenarios. As a final note, we argue that the role that goal-directed and experiential activities may play in facilitating the creation of compelling online environments may also be important in a broader consumer policy context.The World Wide Web has the potential to change much about consumer behavior and consumer communication. Web-based chatting, the focus of this study, is one example. In this article, we provide an illustrative description of various consumer chatting situations, examine the motivations underlying Web-based chatting, and discuss the ways in which chatters act as “naive marketers” in their attempt to attract chatting partners. Using information gathered through the combined use of an Internet survey and a content analysis, we explore five research questions: who chats, why individuals chat, how chatters communicate, what links exist between Web chatting and other consumer behaviors, and which factors lead to a successful chatting experience? The findings provide some insight into how consumers market themselves in cyberspace and the effectiveness of their “personal advertisements” in attracting other chatters.Whereas the Internet itself poses unique challenges and opportunities, it is possible that the context of the Internet (a computer context) affects consumers differently than other contexts would, thereby causing people to think about and evaluate products differently. Drawing from learning theory and the functional theory of attitudes, it is predicted that computers, by being associated with the accessibility of detailed information, will elicit a need for meaning. Consequently, when a computer is present, people may think about and seek more product information than will those evaluating the product on paper (a print context). The results of an experiment support these hypotheses. Across two diverse products, the mere presence of a computer caused people to think more about and request more information about the product than those in the print context did. Furthermore, the attitudes of those in the computer context were more representative of both dimensions described in the advertisement, whereas the attitudes of those in the print context reflected the valence of the dimension that is typically used when evaluating the product. Implications for promoting products and conducting market research in computer environments are discussed.In the bricks-and-mortar environment, stores employ sales people that have learned to distinguish between shoppers based on their in-store behavior. Some shoppers appear to be very focused in looking for a specific product. In those cases, sales people may step in and help the shopper find what they are looking for. In other cases, the shopper is merely “window shopping.” The experienced sales person can identify these shoppers and either ignore them and let them continue window shopping, or intercede and try and stimulate a purchase in the appropriate manner. However, in the virtual shopping environment, there is no sales person to perform that role. Therefore, this article theoretically develops and empirically tests a typology of store visits in which visits vary according to the shoppers’ underlying objectives. By using page-to-page clickstream data from a given online store, visits are categorized as a buying, browsing, searching, or knowledge-building visit based on observed in-store navigational patterns, including the general content of the pages viewed. Each type of visit varies in terms of purchasing likelihood. The shoppers, in each case, are also driven by different motivations and therefore would respond differentially to various marketing messages. The ability to categorize visits in such a manner allows the e-commerce marketer to identify likely buyers and design more effective, customized promotional message.We propose an analytical framework for studying bidding behavior in online auctions. The framework focuses on three key dimensions: the multi-stage process, the types of value-signals employed at each phase, and the dynamics of bidding behavior whereby early choices impact subsequent bidding decisions. We outline a series of propositions relating to the auction entry decision, bidding decisions during the auction, and bidding behavior at the end of an auction. In addition, we present the results of three preliminary field studies that investigate factors that influence consumers’ value assessments and bidding decisions. In particular, (a) due to a focus on the narrow auction context, consumers under-search and, consequently, overpay for widely available commodities (CDs, DVDs) and (b) higher auction starting prices tend to lead to higher winning bids, particularly when comparable items are not available in the immediate context. We discuss the implications of this research with respect to our understanding of the key determinants of consumer behavior in this increasingly important arena of purchase decisions.

Short sea shipping in North America: understanding the requirements of Atlantic Canadian shippers

This research examines the potential for short sea shipping services on the east coast of North America, and focuses on the factors that freight shippers use to choose a transport mode. While there is significant literature available on modal choice and carrier selection, very little examines the effect of splitting the business on the choice that shippers specifically make between short sea and trucking options. Contrary to existing literature, we find that shippers’ perceptions of short sea are favourable in this market. We also identify a new method of collecting data on how companies split business in these decisions.

Buyer Behavior in Personalized Shopping Environments

One of the most exciting aspects of electronic shopping environments (such as online stores) is that they allow firms to create personalized customer interfaces. That is, user interfaces of commercial web sites can be designed to be adaptive to the specific interests, needs, and preferences of individual shoppers at particular points in time. In principle, such personalization can yield a unique user interface for each customer, based on what the site knows, or is able to infer, about that particular shopper. As a research group, the authors have been working on advancing our understanding of buyer behavior in such personalized electronic shopping environments. This is important from both a scientific and an applied standpoint. In terms of basic research, there is a need to develop and test theories of human decision making in personalized information environments. From a more applied perspective, it is important to understand how shoppers respond to various aspects of interface personalization. In what follows, we discuss the key insights to date from an ongoing program of research on buyer behavior in personalized electronic shopping environments. We present selected findings from a number of experiments that we have conducted, and the collective results are based on primary data obtained from a total of more than 2,000 study participants. This research program has been carried out with the support of the Institute for Online Consumer Studies (IOCS) – a laboratory for computer-based experimental research in the area of consumer decision making. The findings we present are organized around three major themes: 1. The effects of personalized product recommendations on various aspects of buyer behavior in electronic shopping environments.

Enhancing digital entertainment through personalization: The evolving role of product placements

Abstract This research tests a model of the effects of personalized product placements on consumer preference, both for the embedded brand and the digital entertainment product in which that brand is embedded. The latter has yet to be examined in the traditional product placements literature. The results of two studies conducted in the domain of eBooks are presented. Evidence suggests that when pre-existing rankings of brands were systematically collected and used to design personalized product embeds, participants were willing to pay more for the eBook when it contained a favourably (vs. unfavourably) ranked brand, but only when the brand embed was subtle (as opposed to obvious). Study 2 also finds that personalized product placements enhanced consumers’ recall of, and probability of choosing the embedded brand. Results suggest that both the digital entertainment product and the embedded brand can benefit from the strategic use of personalized product placements.