EFFECTS OF MODALITY INTERACTIVITY AND USER AROUSAL IN ONLINE SHOPPING SITES
Open Access
- Author:
- Xu, Qian
- Graduate Program:
- Mass Communications
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 11, 2010
- Committee Members:
- Shyam Sundar Sethuraman, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Shyam Sundar Sethuraman, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Fuyuan Shen, Committee Member
Michael Grant Schmierbach, Committee Member
Rachel Annette Smith, Committee Member - Keywords:
- interactivity
modality interactivity
arousal
e-commerce - Abstract:
- Today’s e-commerce websites provide a variety of modality-interactivity tools to allow consumers to access product by performing different actions on the site. This dissertation tries to reveal how these tools differ from the traditional online features, such as simple clicks and how these features change the way in which consumers process the product information online and evaluate the product. The way how interactivity influences consumers’ information processing (Sundar, 2007) is very similar to what Kahneman (1973) hypothesized as the role of physiological arousal on individuals’ cognitive functioning. Would arousal then function as an engine to magnify the effect of modality interactivity on consumers’ cognitive processing? How would it affect modality interactivity’s influence on consumers’ attitudes and behavioral intentions toward product and the site? The arousal was treated as the other independent variable in this study. A 3 (interactivity: low, medium, high) × 3 (arousal: control, low arousal, high arousal) between- subjects factorial experiment was conducted to understand how modality interactivity and arousal affects consumers on the perceptual, cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral perspectives. The major findings of the study included the following aspects. 1) Modality-interactivity may affect an individual’s allocation of cognitive resources for interactive versus non-interactive content on the same webpage. 2) While high-modality interactivity might expand the perceptual bandwidth in general, arousal would control the allocation of resources to interactive and non-interactive contents. 3) It identified a series of mediators for the influence of modality-interactivity on product purchase likelihood, such as engagement, and website attitudes. These findings imply that e-tailers need to be careful about where to employ interactivity features on the site and how many interactivity tools they would like to have without violating consumers’ expectation of the site’s interactivity. E-tailers would also have to decide what kind of outcome they would like to achieve and strike a balance between encouraging more elaboration and generating more engagement with website content while employing interactivity tools and embedding music. 4) It also identified how hedonic and utilitarian shopping orientation would moderate the effects of interactivity and arousal.