04-01-2013, 02:40 PM
Consumer Decision Making in Online Shopping Environments: The Effects of Interactive Decision Aids
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Abstract
Despite the explosive growth of electronic commerce and the
rapidly increasing number of consumers who use interactive
media (such as the World Wide Web) for prepurchase information
search and online shopping, very little is known
about how consumers make purchase decisions in such settings.
A unique characteristic of online shopping environments
is that they allow vendors to create retail interfaces
with highly interactive features. One desirable form of interactivity
from a consumer perspective is the implementation
of sophisticated tools to assist shoppers in their purchase decisions
by customizing the electronic shopping environment
to their individual preferences. The availability of such
tools, which we refer to as interactive decision aids for consumers,
may lead to a transformation of the way in which shoppers
search for product information and make purchase decisions.
The primary objective of this paper is to investigate
the nature of the effects that interactive decision aids may
have on consumer decision making in online shopping
environments.
While making purchase decisions, consumers are often
unable to evaluate all available alternatives in great depth
and, thus, tend to use two-stage processes to reach their decisions.
At the first stage, consumers typically screen a large
set of available products and identify a subset of the most
promising alternatives. Subsequently, they evaluate the latter
in more depth, perform relative comparisons across products
on important attributes, and make a purchase decision.
Given the different tasks to be performed in such a two-stage
process, interactive tools that provide support to consumers
in the following respects are particularly valuable: (1) the
initial screening of available products to determine which
ones are worth considering further, and (2) the in-depth comparison
of selected products before making the actual purchase
decision. This paper examines the effects of two decision
aids, each designed to assist consumers in performing
one of the above tasks, on purchase decision making in an
online store.
Introduction
The popularity of interactive media such as the World
Wide Web (WWW) has been growing at a very rapid
pace (see, e.g., GVU 1999). From a marketing perspective,
this has manifested itself primarily in two ways:
(1) a drastic increase in the number of companies that
seek to use theWWWto communicate with (potential)
customers, and (2) the rapid adoption of theWWWby
broad consumer segments for a variety of purposes,
including prepurchase information search and online
shopping (Alba et al. 1997). The combination of these
two developments provides a basis for substantial
growth in the commercial use of interactive media.
The focus of this paper is on one specific type of
commercial use of interactive media: shopping in online
environments. We conceptualize this behavior as a
shopping activity performed by a consumer via a
computer-based interface, where the consumer’s computer
is connected to, and can interact with, a retailer’s
digital storefront (implemented on some computer)
through a network (e.g., the WWW). A consumer can
engage in online shopping in any location, but our conceptualization
is based on the assumptions that the
products of interest are not physically present at the
time and that no face-to-face assistance is available to
the shopper.
Human Decision Making and Decision Aids
Humans adapt their decision making strategies to specific
situations and environments (see, e.g., Payne
HA¨ UBL AND TRIFTS
Consumer Decision Making in Online Shopping Environments
6 Marketing Science/Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter 2000
1982). They can be described as “cognitive misers”
who strive to reduce the amount of cognitive effort
associated with decision making (Shugan 1980). The
notion that individuals are typically willing to settle
for imperfect accuracy of their decisions in return for
a reduction in effort is well supported (Bettman et al.
1990, Johnson and Payne 1985) and consistent with the
idea of bounded rationality (Simon 1955). Because of
this trade-off between effort and accuracy, decision
makers frequently choose options that are satisfactory
but would be suboptimal if decision costs were zero.
This is particularly common when alternatives are numerous
and/or difficult to compare, i.e., when the
complexity of the decision environment is high (Payne
et al. 1993).
Interactive Decision Aids for Online Shopping Overview of Tools
The technology available for implementing machine
interactivity in online shopping environments has the
potential to provide consumers with unparalleled opportunities
to locate and compare product offerings
(Alba et al. 1997, p. 38). Such capabilities are particularly
valuable given that online stores cannot offer
physical contact with products, do not allow face-toface
interaction with a salesperson, and may offer a
very large number of alternatives because of their virtually
infinite “shelfspace,” i.e., the lack of physical
constraints with respect to product display.