The authors propose that consumers’ shopping styles influence online perceived benefits and risks in online shopping. An empirical test of the models provide support for the majority of the hypothesized relationships and a better understanding of the effects of consumers’ shopping on perceived benefits and risks in online shopping.

Shopping cart abandonment of the online shopping process is a major challenge for firms. It describes the phenomenon that a potential customer starts a check out process for an online order but drops out of the process before completing the purchase. On average, 650 out of 1,000 customers do not convert (Baymard Institute 2017), which highlights the managerial relevance and impact of this phenomenon for online firms. Since shopping cart abandonment directly affects an online firm’s sales and revenue, researchers and practitioners likewise are interested in understanding why people leave a website without completing the shopping process and, more importantly, how to reduce online shopping cart abandonment. However, to date, research on these questions is scarce (e.g., Kukar-Kinney and Close 2010) and firms lack guidance how to deal with online shopping cart abandonment. The goal of this study is to investigate effective countermeasures that firms can use to reduce and prevent the likelihood of abandonment and thereby to increase the likelihood of a conversion. We conducted a field experiment in cooperation with a German accessories online retailer over three weeks (n = 8,467 shopping carts) and tested the effectiveness of a reminder pop-up window with a 10% discount vs. a reminder pop-up window without a discount vs. a control group. All online store visitors within the period were randomly assigned to one of three groups once they have put an item in the shopping cart. The pop-up windows appeared once they were about to click on the exit button. Our results indicate that a reminder pop-up window with a 10% discount significantly increases the conversion rate on the website compared to the control group, leading to an increase in revenue of approximately € 5,000. In contrast, a reminder pop up window a discount does not seem to reduce shopping cart abandonment. Further, we will investigate how this campaign affects the retailer’s overall profitability. In addition, using a laboratory experiment (n = 1,041) we replicated and extended our insights on effective countermeasures for shopping cart abandonment. People seem to be more likely to convert when there is a guest checkout option available. In sum, our research has important implications for researchers and online firms how to deal with online shopping cart abandonment.

Omni-channel strategy is an innovative paradigm for integrated information distribution of inventory, sales, operations, marketing, delivery, pickups and returns in supply chain management. Recently the distribution strategy faces new challenges with the advent of mobile distribution channels. Social media with countless apps imposes additional stress on supply chain operations. Due to these changes, distribution network in supply chain is changing naturally and rapidly from multi-channel to omnni-channel platform. Recently numerous domestic distributors establish and adapt this new supply chain optimization tool as a part of seamless flow of movements of goods from one channel to other channels. The objective of this paper is to present a preliminary findings on how omnni-channel affects the supply chain management. A survey is used to ascertain in the degree of omnni-channel implementation and statistical evidence is provided to test sets of hypothesis. The results of the questionnaire showed that consumers' purchasing styles differed by gender, age, purchase purpose, and product type. In particular, women consider purchasing experience in omni-channel to be important. As food and household goods can be conveniently shipped, consumers prefer online purchasing it. Conversely, consumers tend to favor omni-channel strategy in connection with offline experience in IT products.

The purpose of this study is to develop a multi-dimensional scale measuring consumers’ perceived challenge in shopping fashion products online, and to verify its validity and reliability. Relevant literature is first reviewed to identify possible dimensions of perceived challenge. Next, Study 1 is conducted in order to explore the dimensions empirically and to see whether the dimensions that emerged were consistent with prior findings. A total of 190 responses to an open-ended question was qualitatively analyzed by using content analysis. The findings of Study 1 generate 26 items reflecting four dimensions (i.e., product knowledge, previous experience, website functionality, and product availability), which correspond to the dimensions suggested in literature review. Study 2 is subsequently conducted to refine the items so that the perceived challenge scale establishes cross-validation, convergent validity, discriminant validity, reliability, and predictive validity. A total of 238 responses is quantitatively analyzed by using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling. In the results of Study 2, the perceived challenge scale is found to consist of a total of 16 items reflecting three dimensions: E-commerce Challenge (corresponding to Previous Experience reported in Study 1), Retailer Challenge (corresponding to Website Functionality), and Product Challenge (corresponding to Product Knowledge); all Product Availability items have been eliminated through the item refinement process. Specifically, E-commerce Challenge and Retailer Challenge are found to predict flow, supporting flow theory, while Product Challenge fails to lead to flow significantly. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future studies are also discussed.

Many consumers are buying products online but a key barrier to purchase are insufficiently detailed product demonstrations (Rose et al., 1999). Consumers have different expectations of online shopping for various product categories sold on the Internet (Hyllegard et al., 2000). The purchase of physical goods, such as sofas, wardrobes or tables, is often associated with increased risk and presents a problem for large furniture retailers, such as Habitat or IKEA. These type of goods be characterized as infrequent and expensive purchases that require extensive decision-making (Oh, Yoon and Shyu, 2008). Furthermore, almost 78% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts because of uncertainty about the consequences of the purchase (Goldwyn, 2003). Currently, large home-furnishing retailers have only used static product presentation formats for their products online that offer basic product information. Thus, this study investigates different product presentation formats that could be used by these retailers in an experimental setting.

We investigate the effect of offline social interactions on online shopping demand and the moderating role of online channel preference in this offline-online relationship. To be specific, we intend to obtain empirical evidence by answering the following questions. First, do offline social interactions affect online demand? Second, to what degree do the active versus passive kinds of offline social interactions have the differential influence on online shopping demand? Third, how does online channel preference affect the effect of offline social interaction on online shopping demand? Drawing on the related literature in the fields of social interactions and Internet retailing, we hypothesize that the active kind of offline social interactions exerts positive influence on online shopping demand whereas the passive kind of offline social interactions has negative effects. We further hypothesize that online channel preference weakens the influence that offline social interactions has for online shopping demand. Both the positive impact of active interactions and the negative impact of passive interactions diminish in determining online shopping demand as online channel preference gets greater. We obtained sales data between January 2008 and April 2010 from a leading Internet retailer that sells baby products in the U.S. The data includes the information of zip codelevel sales and shipping days. We merged this proprietary data with the following three commercial datasets purchased from ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute): (1) 2011 Civic Activities Market Potential, (2) 2011 Internet Market Potential, and (3) 2011 Baby Products Market Potential). Each of these datasets includes the information of offline social interactions, online shopping preferences and offline baby product sales, respectively. Finally, as we focus on the zip code-level interplay between offline social interactions and online demand, we control for regional demographics and market condition. As such, we obtained the 2010 Census data and 2009 ACS (American Community Survey) data to account for overall local environments (e.g. population density of children aged less than five years, percentage with college education). Our empirical analyses and hypotheses testing provide the following important findings. First, active offline social interactions have positive effects on online shopping demand. This indicates that active social interactions reflect information exchange among long ties, and this informational influence in turn reduces any risk and uncertainty associated with online shopping. Second, passive offline social interactions have negative effects on online shopping demand. This suggests that passive social interactions take place among local ties and generate normative influence to conform to the expectations of others about shopping behavior, making online shopping as a new channel less attractive there. Third, online channel preference is significantly positive on online shopping demand, confirming prior studies on the relationship between channel preference and demand (Changchit et al. 2014; Valentini et al. 2011). Fourth, the positive effect that active offline social interactions have for online shopping demand decreases as online channel preference increases. Regions with strong online channel preference are likely to have well-established channel propensity and the informational influence of social interactions in reducing uncertainty becomes weaker. As such, social interactions do not play a role in spreading information about the online marketplace in regions where online channel benefits are well understood (Burt 1992, 2005; Harrigan et al. 2012). Lastly, the negative influence of passive offline social interactions gets smaller as online channel preference gets greater. Online channel preference reflects the locally-determined attractiveness of the online marketplace, and this in turn weakens normative influence to conform to the expectations and shopping behaviors of local ties.

The objective is to explore how fashion websites affect consumers’ perception and evaluation of footwear. Mixed methodologies including eye-tracking experiments, field note and semi-structured interviews were conducted. According to our results, the relationship between pupil dilation and fixation count is related. Many participants were more concerned about the style and comfort of the product.

When substitute products are recommended, online consumers are more likely to evaluate products based on concrete attributes than abstract attributes and to perceive subordinate attributes as more important. When complementary products are recommended, concrete or subordinate attributes considered relatively less important, leading to less choice difficulty during the comparison process. Introduction Retailers use recommendation systems to support Internet shoppers who face the problem of searching for and selecting the right product from a vast assortment of options. Previous research argues that online recommendations help decision making by reducing consumers’ cognitive effort, while other studies claim that online recommendations increase consumers’ confusion (Xiao & Benbasat, 2007). One of the reasons for this lack of consensus seems the characteristics of recommendations not considered in the research. This study attempts to investigate how recommended product types, whether they involve complementary or substitute products, influence consumers’ decision-making process when shopping for fashion products. We address recommendations of complementary and substitute products prime consumers’ construal levels in different ways; consumers compare products at a lower construal level when substitute products are recommended than when complementary products are. We also demonstrate that consumers, as a consequence, evaluate alternatives based on concrete attributes (i.e., the physical and aesthetic characteristics of products), as opposed to abstract attributes (i.e., values and qualities), when substitute products are recommended, and perceive product attributes previously considered less important as being more important after recommendations. Literature Review Recommendations of Complementary and Substitute Products A recommendation system is the electronic software that implicitly and/or explicitly elicits the interests or preferences of consumers and provides recommendations (Xiao & Benbasat, 2007). In online fashion stores, such a recommendation system is often found as a form of recommendations of substitute (i.e., similar) or complementary (i.e., matching) products on the product detail pages. Presenting complementary or substitute products on a webpage can serve as a product display that affects consumers’ purchase decision. Because online shoppers move through webpages vertically (i.e., between product list pages) or horizontally (i.e., from product list pages to product detail pages), the simultaneous comparison of all alternatives can be difficult (Lee & Yi, 2014). Accordingly, consumers make local choices after comparisons on a single page, which subsequently affects the global choice (Simonson & Tversky, 1992). To explain how recommending complementary or substitute products affects decision making, this study adopts Construal Level Theory (Liberman & Trope, 1998) as its theoretical framework. It claims that people construe an event or an object at different levels of abstraction, from a lower-level, concrete to a higher-level, abstract construal, and represent it more abstractly as psychological distance increases (Liberman & Trope, 1998). Recent studies of assortment found that benefit-based organizations of assortment lead to more abstract construal, relative to attribute-based organizations of assortment (Lamberton & Diehl, 2013). Given that recommended substitute products share similar attributes with alternatives and are from the same product categories, the distance between the alternatives and recommended products is relatively short. Meanwhile, complementary products are recommended based on their benefits and selected among different product categories relatively far from the alternatives. Therefore, we suggest H 1 that consumers evaluate and compare alternatives in a concrete way when substitute products are recommended, on the other hand, in an abstract way when complementary products recommended. Recommendations and Product Comparison The attributes considered during evaluation are expected to differ since different levels of construal are induced by two types of recommendations. During the purchase decision, consumers often perform relative comparisons across options on attributes (Bettman, Luce, & Payne, 1998). For fashion products, both concrete and abstract attributes exist within a hierarchical structure, whereby abstract attributes are determined by concrete ones (Kim & Rhee, 1991). Prior research on construal level indicates that concrete attributes are emphasized as psychological distance decreases, whereas abstract attributes become salient as this distance increases (Liberman, Trope, & Wakslak, 2007). Accordingly, we posit H 2 that when substitute products are recommended, consumers weigh concrete attributes more than abstract attributes. On the other hand, when complementary products are recommended, where abstract benefits are emphasized, consumers consider abstract attributes more important than concrete attributes. Recommendations also influence consumers’ experience of difficulty during the comparison process. When examining alternatives based on attributes, consumers have a tendency to give more weight to attributes that they think are important (Dhar, Nowlis, & Sherman, 1999). Thus, choice task entails distinction between more and less important attributes (Sela, Berger, & Nardini, 2013), which leads to clear preference and less difficulty of choice. Research suggests that construal level affects the change in attribute weights for central or peripheral features in that a high construal level decreases comparison relative to a low construal level by shifting attention away from low-level details (Khan, Zhu, & Kalra, 2011). This finding implies that one can distribute attribute weights better at a high construal level, while one may weigh unimportant attributes heavily at a low construal level. Accordingly, we propose H 3 that consumers distinguish important core attributes from less important subordinate ones when complementary products are recommended. On the contrary, when susbtitue products are recommended, consumers consider subordinate attributes more important after recommendations, making the comparison of the alternatives difficult. Method Seven hundred and two females in their 20s and 30s in South Korea participated in online survey. The survey used a 2 (products: shirts and jackets) × 2 (recommendation: substitute and complementary) between-subject design. We randomly assigned half the participants to the shirts condition and the other half to the jackets condition. After giving purchasing scenarios with product assortments of six products, we asked participants to look around the assortments and select tentative purchase options. Participants then were asked to rate the perceived importance of concrete and abstract product attributes. Later, we recommended four substitute or complementary products for each of the two most preferred alternatives. After allowing participants sufficient time to explore the recommended products, we asked them to make their final decision. After indicating their choices, participants completed several questions related to their choice process on seven-point scales. We measured behavioral identification, perceived importance of concrete and abstract attributes, information overload during the selection process, and choice difficulty. To investigate the possibility that participants’ personal tendencies affect the choice, we additionally measured maximization tendency, fashion involvement and perceived fit for recommendation and Internet shopping experience. Finally, demographic characteristics were measured. The stimuli photos used in the study were collected from five Internet shopping malls to increase external validity, and selected on the judgments of the researchers and experts after a pre-test. Results Respondents exhibited no differences in maximization tendency, fashion involvement, perceived fit for recommendation, or experience of Internet shopping regardless of the recommended stimulant. However, as expected, respondents of substitute products with recommendations showed a lower behavioral identification score than did those of recommended complementary products. This result indicates recommendation of substitute products induces a lower construal level, accepting H 1. The perceived importance of product attributes varied by recommendations. Prior to product recommendations, no difference in the importance of concrete or abstract attributes was observed between the groups. However, the perceived importance of concrete attributes increased after recommendation of substitute products, while no significant change in the importance of concrete attributes was found after recommendation of complementary products. Recommendation have no effect on the change in the perceived importance of abstract attributes. Rather, product type did have an effect: the importance of abstract attributes increased after recommendations when jackets were compared. These results imply that recommendation of substitute products solely had an effect on the evaluation of concrete attributes, partially supporting H 2. Recommendations were also found to affect the increase in the importance of subordinate product attributes. Participants were likely to weigh subordinate, concrete attributes more after recommendation of substitute products than after recommendation of complementary products. In addition, when substitute products were recommended, participants considered subordinate, concrete attributes more importantly than subordinate, abstract attributes. The increase in the importance of subordinate, abstract attributes was irrespective of recommendation type. This result supports the notion that recommendation types can systematically influence the evaluation of options. When substitute products were recommended, consumers tend to assess products based on concrete attributes and perceive subordinate attributes as more important than before recommendations. On the contrary, when complementary products were recommended, the types of attributes served as evaluation criteria were unchanged and did not accompany an increase in the importance of subordinate attributes. According to Sela et al. (2013), the distinction between important and unimportant attributes blurs as the importance of subordinate attributes increases, which implies it becomes difficult to compare options. Indeed, regardless of product types, respondents in the present study were more likely to experience difficulty in making a decision when substitute products were recommended than when complementary products were, supporting H 3. Conclusion This study contributes to theory and practice in many ways. Our work demonstrated that the recommendation type alters the perception of the importance of the attributes of fashion products by affecting consumers’ construal levels. Furthermore, we extended the literature on recommendation systems by identifying additional factors that influence consumers’ decision-making process. Prior research has focused on the horizontal presentation of recommendation. We, however, investigated how vertical presentation, namely recommendation on product detail webpages, affected the evaluation of alternatives. Practically, the findings have important managerial implications. Retailers provide recommendations to increase sales by helping consumers efficiently make a purchase decision. Nevertheless, consumers may engage in a complex comparison process when substitute products recommended. When complementray products recommended, the attributes used as comparison criteria are relatively consistent and steady. Thus, retailers can predict a consumer’s final choice based on the early prediction of his/her preferences. The results of this study are useful for offline retailers as well as online retailers wishing to marketing and sales strategies.

The purpose of this study is to present theoretical and experimental evidence for a niche strategy for small and medium online shopping malls to run business against large famous shopping malls prevailing the E-commerce market. For this, the present study demonstrates how chronic construal levels of consumers may affect their alternative choice for online shopping via various contexts (Experiment 1-3) and categories (Experiment 3-5). This series of experiments suggests that consumers with high construal level can be defined as a group that is relatively less susceptible to reputation of the shopping malls. Thus, strategically targeting this group of consumers will help small and medium-sized online malls lacking store reputation to mitigate their competitive disadvantage. Based on both existing literature and the experimental results as above, this research discusses possible methods for small and medium-sized online shopping malls to target high-construal segmentation.

본 연구에서는 온라인 쇼핑몰 상황에서 이전사업경험, 제품속성과 온라인 고객 의견이 신제품 매출성과에 미친 영향을 살펴보았다. 인터넷 쇼핑몰에서 제품 성과에 대한 연 구들은 선진국 온라인 쇼핑몰을 중심으로 고객들의 구전효과에 초점을 두고 연구를 진행해 왔으며 상대적으로 기업특성이나 제품속성에 대한 연구는 미흡하였다. 본 연구에서는 중국 인터넷 쇼핑몰에서 판매중인 총 407개 TV모델들을 대상으로 기업특성, 제품속성 및 온라인 고객의견이 제품 매출성과에 미친 영향을 살펴보았다. 기업특성에서는 이전TV제조업체들의 제품이 신규 진입기업들의 제품들보다 매출성과가 높았다. 제품속성에서는 경쟁제품 대비 초기 가격수준이 낮을수록 성과가 높으며 가격할인율이 높은 경우에는 오히려 매출성과가 낮았다. 전반적인 제품의 기술경쟁력 수준이 높을수록 판매성과가 높으며 신기능의 특성에 따라 매출성과에 미친 효과는 다르게 나타났다. 제품별 온라인 고객평가 의견수가 많을수록 해당 제품의 매출성과는 높은 것으로 나타난 반면, 온라인 고객평가 점수는 매출성과에 유의 한 영향관계나 나타나지 않았다. 본 연구에서는 온라인 쇼핑몰 상황에서 신제품 매출성과 향 상을 위한 이론적 실무적 의의를 제시하고 향후 연구과제들을 제시하였다.

The purposes of this study was to identify fashion shoppers’perceived risk and satisfaction while shopping at overseas online shopping malls based on their internet shopping values. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection and an internet survey was conducted from April 12~15, 2015. Most consumers purchased one or two fashion items at overseas online malls directly, motivated by low prices, and spent 200,000~400,000 won during the last one year. The factors of consumers’ internet shopping values were information, hedonics, and practicality. Factors of perceived risk were delivery and refund, price and approval, and product and shopping mall. Consumers were divided into three categories: heavy pursuit shoppers, intermediate shoppers, and uninformed shoppers based on their internet shopping values. Heavy pursuit shoppers were primarily female; they spent more, felt a deeper patronage with overseas online shopping malls and their perceived risk regarding delivery and refund was higher than the other shoppers. The group of uninformed shoppers were primarily male. They spent less, had low patronage with overseas online shopping malls, and their perceived risk regarding delivery and refund was lower than other shoppers. Overall satisfaction was positively affected by information provided while shoppers were surfing the overseas online shopping malls and practicality. Satisfaction was negatively affected by perceived risk regarding price and approval and difficulty in finding specific products while shopping at overseas online shopping malls.

This study is to explore the effect of music characteristics (i.e., likeliness and familiarity of music) on the relationship between mood and attitude toward the product in the online shopping mall selling hand-made shoes. A total of 319 consumers participated in experiments with online shopping mall stimuli with a variety of background music. In results, consumer mood positively affected attitude toward the hand-made shoe products in the online shopping mall under background music. A moderating effect of music likeliness was found in the relationship between mood and product attitude, indicating that mood more strongly affected product attitude under more liked music than under less liked music. When consumers are listening to more liked music and are in good mood, they may build their attitudes toward products independently from their mood, whereas they may build positive attitude under good mood versus negative attitudes under bad mood if they are listening to less liked music. A moderating effect of music familiarity was not found in the relationship between mood and product attitude. Based on results, it was confirmed that the S-O-R model could be applied to explain the effect of background music on consumer responses in online shopping malls. Marketers may be able to select and adjust the likeliness and familiarity of background music to better serve consumers in diverse shopping conditions, referring to the study findings.

The purposes of this study is to investigate the attitudes and value of fashion product description and consumer replies used in online shopping malls, and to examine the differences in the perceived reliability(objectivity, expertise, trustworthiness) preference and purchase intention toward the product as determined by the appeal type (evaluation-sentimental vs. factual-information) of the product description, the direction(negative vs. positive) and type(factual vs. evaluative) of consumer replies for the product in online shopping malls. Data was collected from female college students with fashion products purchase experience at online shopping malls by questionnaire survey (N=424) and analyzed by using frequency analysis, t-test and ANOVA. Results showed that consumers respondents tended to read product description and other consumer replies before purchasing, when shopping for fashion products through an on-line shopping mall. They thought that sellers' product description and the consumers' replies were helpful in making their decision; but, they were also skeptical about product description. Respondents showed higher perceived reliability, preference and purchase intention to the factual-information type product description than the evaluation-sentimental type. Positive consumer replies were more effective in yielding higher preferences and purchase intentions. Factual replies tend to yield higher reliability than evaluative replies.

인터넷 쇼핑몰이 활성화되면서 소비자들은 이전보다 많은 상품 선택 기회를 갖게 되었다. 이러한 변화는 소비자의 권익 보호 차원에서 일면 긍정적이지만, 상품 구매를 위해 소비자가 한꺼번에 많은 대안들의 평가를 해야 한다는 점에서는 부정적이라고 할 수 있다. 특히 인터넷 쇼핑몰은 거래가 대면하지 않고 일어난다는 속성을 가지고 있어, 고객의 상품구매 과정을 지원해 줄 기능 마련이 시급하다. 본 연구에서는 이러한 문제의 효과적인 해결을 위해, 다기준 의사결정기법(Multicriteria decision making) 중 하나인 PROMETHEEⅡ(Preference Ranking Organization METHod Enrichment Evaluation)를 사용하여 구매고객의 구매기준에 따른 상품들의 순위를 제공하는 웹 어플리케이션을 제시하고자 한다.

Electronic commerce has provided another access for consumers to purchase products, but some researches have pointed out that there are difficulties for companies to do business on web. For lack of trust, many people not prefer purchasing through virtual channels. Based on the literature review, this study aims at empirically testing the impact of website design on individual trust in internet firms. From statistic analysis, we will conclude that security, interaction, and navigation functionality will affect on-line trust.