This paper explores the impact of the quality of a web site on the cognitive process leading to consumers’ emotions—considered as direct antecedents to shopping behaviors and operationalized as mental states of readiness arising from the appraisal of events. A parsimonious theoretical model was defined and tested with data collected from 215 web-shopping episodes during which consumers were shopping for low-touch products. Analysis of the results showed that web site quality had a positive impact on the cognitive appraisal of situational state, which in turn influenced five of the six emotions of the proposed model: liking, joy, pride, dislike, and frustration. Results also showed that a substantial number of shoppers experienced intensively the emotions of liking and joy. Moreover, this paper highlights several implications that could help managers and webmasters improve the quality of their web sites.
Without being the object of much media attention, the number of people shopping online is increasing steadily. Three out of four Internet users in the United States aged 14 and older are shopping online for retail products and services [21]. This represents 114.2 million online shoppers, approximately 12% more than in 2002. In Canada, an estimated 3.2 million households actively participated in e-commerce in 2003, up from 2.8 million the year before [65]. As a result, North American online sales have progressed rapidly over recent years, notwithstanding the fact that B2C sales outpaced non-e-commerce sales by 25% between 1999 and 2002 in the U.S. [75]. Therefore, for well established Canadian and U.S. companies covering a wide range of retail sectors (e.g., J.C. Penney, Delta Airlines, Best Buy, the Target Group discount chain, and Indigo–Canada's largest book retailer), online retail sales are now the fast-growing part of their business. In addition, an increasing number of brick and mortar organizations selling expensive and complex goods are launching online initiatives to compete with pure-play online retailers; for example, Home Depot is now offering more than 1800 products including trash compactors, cook-tops, dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, and wall ovens on its web site. Further, Birks & Sons – a Canadian manufacturer and retailer of fine jewellery – is using its web site to sell a wide variety of products advertised in its catalogue.
While the B2C market is growing and profitable, the competition for market share is also increasing in many retail sectors (e.g., books, travel, information, music, insurance, electronics). Therefore, to remain competitive, it is imperative for e-retailers to invest time and money to design, develop, and maintain high quality web sites, since customers are more likely to shop on web sites that exhibit high quality attributes.
Previous studies of web site quality have focussed mainly on defining and operationalizing the concept. Very few have attempted to measure the impact of web site quality on consumers’ behaviors. Moreover, no study has yet attempted to measure the impact of web site quality on the cognitive and affective processes leading to behaviors sought by e-retailers (e.g., exploring the web site, requesting additional information, purchasing, and revisiting).
Based on literature covering the concepts of quality and atmospherics, as well as the theoretical foundations in psychology of emotions, we examined the relationship between web site quality and the shopper's cognitive process leading to emotions while shopping online. The hypotheses we postulated were:
(1)
Does the quality of a web site influence consumers’ overall evaluation of the shopping episode? and
(2)
Does consumers’ overall evaluation of the online shopping episode impact the intensity of the emotions felt by them?
The main objective was thus to demonstrate that web site quality is a noteworthy factor that affects the cognitive processes leading to emotions while shopping.
Our study demonstrated that web site quality positively affects the cognitive appraisal of situational state and the more positive the evaluation of online shopping experience, the higher the intensity of the emotions of liking, joy and pride. However, the more negative the evaluation, the higher the intensity of dislike and frustration. It also confirmed that six emotions (liking, joy, pride, dislike, frustration, and fear) were experienced by consumers during web shopping, though the mean intensity levels of these emotions was low to moderate. It was, however, important to note that, for nearly a third of the shoppers, emotions such as liking and joy were experienced at a higher than moderate intensity level. Only a small percentage of participants reported experiencing no emotions.
Two reasons might elucidate why the negative relationship between the cognitive appraisal of situational state and the emotion of fear was not significant. First, participants were not required to purchase products during their shopping episodes. Second, as indicated previously (Table 2), participants had positive web experiences and thus may not have considered that a bad shopping experience for a low-touch good could lead to fear.
