مطالعه تجربی از برداشت های مخاطبان از صفحات وب B2C در ژاپن، چین و انگلستان

Negative impressions that arise during a first interaction with a Business-to-Customer web page often have the unpleasant side effect to destroy a firm's efforts in achieving B2C electronic commerce on the WWW. This paper verifies the relation between audience impressions and the visual style of a B2C web page. In comparison to previous work, the experimental procedure was greatly improved. It was therefore expected that this leads to improved results with higher reliability. Moreover, this study considered the impressions of Japanese, Chinese, and English subjects to investigate differences and consistencies in impressions, which are based on the underlying culture. Three empirical studies based on self-report questionnaires were conducted in Japan, China and the UK. The studies measured the subjects' impressions of various B2C web pages that showed eight design factors. The evaluation values for 17 impression factors and their antonym terms were collected in the questionnaires. The studies in China and the UK were conducted using the same procedure as in Japan. Sign tests of the results show a significant difference in subjects' impressions corresponding to changes in design factors. Moreover, the results show cross-cultural consistencies in various impressions but also several differences between the subject groups. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the empirical results for the visual design of international B2C web pages in terms of target impressions.

The Internet profoundly changes the way in which commerce is conducted. In some ways, Internet commerce seems deceptively simple [1] and [2]. However, there are many factors affecting the success of electronic commerce. One of these factors is web usability, which becomes increasingly important for the Internet society. One day it may become a reality that usability drives the Internet economy [2]. Many Web sites are confronted with usability problems which shall be solved by usability evaluation, web improvement and redesign. Usability of IT applications should display five major attributes: learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors and satisfaction [3] and [4]. “Satisfaction” shows a user's subjective impression of a system. “Satisfaction” requests the system should be pleasant to use so that users like it [4] and [5]. For business to customer electronic commerce (B2C EC) on the WWW, satisfaction of customers appears more important. However, satisfaction is not intuitive and has often been ignored by designers. First impression is a subattribute of satisfaction [6], which decides a consumer's image of a product or a company. Impression has the same role in B2C EC on WWW. The positive/good impression of a B2C web page is an important component of audience satisfaction. With a bad impression of a B2C web page, audiences will stop browsing or will not return any more. There are so many similar B2C web pages on WWW. The importance of impressions has been emphasized in the design of physical products [7], [8] and [9]. In real world commerce, the impressions elicited by a sales agent or a commercial organization as a whole influence the overall satisfaction of the customer [10]. The feelings that are aroused in interacting with a system are especially important for systems that are used on a discretionary basis such as EC [11]. In the case of EC, impressions of the web pages will influence the audience's desire to purchase. Impressions can be expected to play a similarly important role in the design of B2C Web pages just as they do for physical products. The impressions created in interacting with a B2C web page are especially important for EC systems, which are used on a voluntary basis. People do not have to use such a system if they dislike it [2]. The same conditions apply to a B2C web page. In B2C EC on the WWW, services or products are supplied to customers through web pages, which are the interface between the seller and the buyer. A positive impression can play an important role in attracting audiences to a web page and turning them into customers. Therefore, the research is needed to analyze the relation between audience impressions and the visual style of a B2C web page. However, little research has been conducted regarding the impressions of B2C web pages. Nielsen's research on web usability merely mentions that the first impressions an audience obtains from a given web page are important [2], [12] and [13]. A systematic methodology that takes in consideration impressions will be helpful in the design of B2C web pages. Kim and Moon [10] have conducted experimental research on the feeling of trustworthiness, which especially focused on the feeling of trustworthiness that the interface of a cyber-banking system should elicit in customers who carry out financial transactions. Forty terms for emotions were identified to indicate emotions elicited by the user interfaces of cyber-banking systems. Fourteen design factors were concluded to describe the studied user interfaces. The results of their research indicate that it is possible to design customer interfaces of cyber-banking systems, which will elicit target emotions, such as trustworthiness.

Based on the improved experimental design in comparison to previous research [10], this research confirms the causal relation between impression and visual design of a B2C web page. The analysis results uncover the probability ranking of choices in eight design factors in terms of target impression. An interesting finding of proximate choices suggests a possible trade off in the visual design of a B2C web page. We have conducted studies in three countries to evaluate the relation between audience impressions and the visual design of B2C web pages. The results indicate that different B2C web page designs will elicit related impressions in Japanese, Chinese and UK subjects. Moreover, the elicitation probability differs between different visual designs related to different target impressions. This can help the designer to understand interactions between audiences and the B2C web pages of an EC web site. The research demonstrates that a specific choice of design factors applied to B2C web pages elicits positive or negative audience impressions. The research also provides the more important conclusion that we can trade off different design options to create an optimal visual design that can realize various target impressions. Generally, the comparison of impressions of subjects from Japan, China and the UK shows that most design factors can elicit the same impressions in three groups of subjects from different culture. This result suggests that many problems in the visual design of B2C web pages have general solutions even in terms of international use. The comparison of the evaluation of impressions based on three groups of subjects shows that some design factors have special culture-dependent characteristics. For this kind of design factor, the optimal design or improvement of B2C web pages must take into consideration the localization of the visual design. Japan's culture has been affected by China's culture since ancient times; Japan's culture was also affected by European culture since the Meiji era. It is assumed that this impact on Japan's culture may be reflected in this research, e.g., the best or worst choices in the Japanese results are expected to be more similar to the Chinese results than to the results obtained in the UK. The assumed tendency was not confirmed by the results of the current study (Table 5 and Table 6). Of course, there are still some limitations in this research that will be addressed in the future. We applied eight design factors and 17 impression factors to construct an evaluating system of impression usability based on the related research and preliminary studies. However, with the further development of web page design techniques, it is necessary to integrate new design factors into further research. Moreover, B2C web pages have to address different target customers and cultures, which require the web designer/developer to adjust the impression factors to achieve their usability objective. Although the 17 impression factors and the eight design factors may not fit the needs of some visual designs of B2C web pages, given the novel developments of the WWW technology, such as flash animation or other visual effects based on DHTML technology. Whereas the eight design factors used in this study are essential components even in today's B2C page design, those new design factors may be considered in future research. To improve good impression usability for B2C EC web pages, a web designer should have a concrete objective of impression usability and clear choices of design factors in mind. Designers can use the approach described in this paper to identify causal relations between their design factors and target impressions. This can be achieved in three stages. Designers should: 1. decide about the target impressions and available design factors; 2. select appropriate subjects from target customers based on design usability testing; 3. conduct the experiment and clarify the causal relations between given design factors and impression factors. They then can realize the actual B2C web page design based on good practice of usability.