Information Format-Shopping Orientation in

E-Commerce：A Cognitive Fit Perspective

Presenter： Tim ChengInstructor： Teresa Hsu

Date： June 22, 2015

Content

• Introduction

• Theoretical Background

• Research Model and Hypotheses

• Research Method

2

Introduction

• Background

• Purpose of the study

3

Background

• E-Commerce is growing rapidly with the proliferation of commercial Web sites and the increasing acceptance of online transactions by consumers. The global online trade is projected to reach $12.8 trillion by 2006, which comprises approximately 18 percent of total sales.

(Cambridge, MA, 2007)

4

Purpose of the study

• This research investigates the fit between information format and shopping task, and examine its influence on consumers’ online shopping performance and perceptions of shopping experience.

5

Theoretical Background

• Cognitive Fit Theory

• Shopping Tasks: Searching Versus Browsing

• Information Format: List Versus Matrix

• Competition-for-Attention Theory

6

Cognitive Fit Theory

• The cognitive fit theory was developed to help up understand how the fit between the presentation format and the decision-making task can influence individuals’ problem solving performance.

(Vessey, 1991)

7

Shopping Tasks: Searching Versus Browsing

• Prior literature on e-commerce has identified two major types of shopping tasks that consumers conduct online: searching tasks and browsing tasks.

(Smith, 1997& Toms, 2000)

8

Information Format: List Versus Matrix

• Information format is defined as the presentation and organization of information about the available alternatives and their attributes, on e-commerce Web sites, there are two popular formats to organize multiple product information on a Web page.

(Cooper-Martin, E., 1993)

9

Competition-for-Attention Theory

• The competition-for-attention theory can be used to provide us with an understanding of how the matrix and list formats differ with regard to competition for attention.

(Janiszewsk, 1998)

10

Research Model and Hypotheses

• Performance

• Shopping Experience

11

Performance

• Time is often used as an indicator of performance in decision-making tasks involving different information formats. (Jarvenpaa, 1989)

• Recall is another dependent variable that is frequently adopted in both research and marketing research to indicate the effectiveness of communication by different information formats.

H1: Information search time will be shorter when the information format matchesthe shopping task.

H2: Recall of product information will be higher when the information formatmatches the shopping task.

12

Shopping Experience

• Cognitive effort refers to the psychological costs of performing the task of obtaining and processing the relevant information in order to arrive at one’s decision.

(Pereira, 2000)• Attitude is a reliable indicator of behavior

intention, which subsequently affects actual behavior. (Ajzen, 1980)

H3: Cognitive effort will be lower when the information format matches the shopping task.

H4: Attitude towards using the Web site will be more positive when the information format matches the shopping task.

13

Research Method

• Subjects and Incentives

• Pretest

• Experimental Procedure

14

Subject and Incentives

• A total of 120 participants will recruit for the experiment. Participation in the study are voluntary.

• The subjects will be paid 7-11 voucher NTW$100 for their participation.

15

Pretest

• This test will ask 30 subjects (who did not participate in the main experiment) from the same sample pool to rate their familiarity with each of the product categories, and indicate whether they had heard of any of the brand names.

16

Experimental Procedure

Enter the website

Shopping process

Collect clickstream

data

Questionnaire regarding

17

18