Zhenhui Jiang

Virtual Product Experience: Effects of Visual and Functional Control of Products on Perceived Diagnosticity and Flow in Electronic Shopping

The development of electronic commerce has been constrained by the inability of online consumers to feel, touch, and sample products through Web interfaces, as they are able to do in conventional in-store shopping. Previous academic studies have argued that this limitation could be partly alleviated by providing consumers with virtual product experience (VPE), to enable potential customers to experience products virtually. This paper discusses virtual control, a specific type of VPE implementation, and identifies its two dimensions: visual control and functional control. Visual control enables consumers to manipulate Web product images, to view products from various angles and distances; functional control enables consumers to explore and experience different features and functions of products. The individual and joint effects of visual and functional control were investigated in a laboratory experiment, the results of which indicated that visual and functional control increased the perceived diagnosticity (i.e., the extent to which a consumer believes the shopping experience is helpful to evaluate a product) of their corresponding attribute factors, and that both visual and functional control increased consumer overall perceived diagnosticity and flow.

Multimedia-based interactive advising technology for online consumer decision support

Multimedia technologies (such as Flash and QuickTime) have been widely used in online product presentation and promotion to portray products in a dynamic way. The continuous visual stimuli and associated sound effects provide vivid and interesting product presentations; hence, they engage online customers in examining products. Meanwhile, recent research has indicated that online shoppers want detailed and relevant product information and explanations [2]. A promising approach is to embed rich product information and explanations into multimedia-enhanced product demonstrations. This approach is called Multimedia-based Product Annotation (MPA), a product presentation in which customers can retrieve embedded product information in a multimedia context.

Enticing consumers via incomplete product experience: an investigation of online product interactivity designs

This paper reports on two studies that investigate the design of online product interactivity. The first study compares three different presentation formats: a video presentation and two Virtual Product Experience (VPE) presentations, namely, triggered interaction and full interaction. The findings suggest that triggered interaction VPE is more effective in enticing users to attend to and further explore the featured products than both the non-interactive video presentation and the full interaction VPE. The second study builds upon the first and focuses on two specific VPE design factors. In particular, it investigates interaction constraint (high versus low constraint) in addition to the activation mode of interaction (process-based interaction versus event-based interaction). The results reveal interesting interaction patterns between the two design factors, i.e., providing less constrained interaction performs better when process-based interaction design is adopted, but performs worse when event-based interaction is employed.

Information Sharing in Online Dyadic Exchange: A Relational Dialectic Perspective

Psychological reactions to privacy invasions are important to information sharing in online dyadic exchange. Although previous studies have enriched understanding on cognitive reaction to privacy invasions, rarely have researchers examined the emotional component. This study aims to fill the gap in the literature by examining the effects of cognitive and emotional reactions on information sharing. To develop the research model, we drew on the relational dialectic perspective and social exchange theories to explain the effects of dialectic tensions on information sharing through privacy threats and negative affect. The research model was tested on survey data gathered from 89 actual chat room users. We found that anonymity status, interaction intrusiveness, and disclosure by counterparts affect privacy threats. Interaction intrusiveness and disclosure by counterparts influence negative affect. Additionally, privacy threats and negative affect were found to be important in shaping information sharing.

Share your view: impact of co-navigation support and status composition in collaborative online shopping

Collaborative online shopping, an emerging paradigm in e-commerce, allows remote shoppers to extend purchase-oriented social interactions into the digital environment. Online vendors have been experimenting ways to facilitate this activity. However, more research needs to be done on identifying what feature can create a pleasing shopping experience and ultimately encourage spending. In this paper, we present an exploration of the impact of co-navigation supports, including location cue, split screen, and shared view, on the experiences and performance of 60 co-shopper dyads. We also studied if status composition of shopping companions played a role in this process. By analyzing about 1800 minutes of eye-tracking data, video footages, and web logs, we found that split screen encouraged more diverse product search, shared view enabled better coordination, and location cue was the least distracting. Co-buyers achieved better factual and inference understanding, though buyer-advisor dyads were more likely to stay together.