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Abstract The purpose of this research was to study the motivation attributes of information products from the end-users’ perspective, and to measure the impact of these attributes on intention-to-use. In the context of Web portal use, the information product generally includes three types of services: personal services (e.g., email), information services (e.g., online news) and search services. The literature underscores the importance of motivational factors such as social escapism and privacy concerns on the intention to use. Drawing from this theoretical background, an initial set of motivation attributes has been identified, and an experimental study using 142 subjects as Web portal users has been conducted. As far as impact analyses are concerned, social escapism motivation, information motivation, interactive control motivation, and socialization were found to highly correlate to all of the three types of services and the combined use. Lessons learned from this study should also help IT professionals to design, develop and deploy more effective general web portals.

1. Introduction Web portals are one of the commonly used information products nowadays. Web portal means “a web site or service that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as e-mail, forums, search engines, and on-line shopping malls” (Webopedia, 2005). A portal is a ‘supersite’ that provides a variety of services including web searches, news, free e-mail, chatting, shopping and links to other sites. Nowadays, web portals play a role as full size hubs of electronic commerce, mail, online communities, and customized news and have became the most visited sites on the web. A general web portal can be seen as a general-purpose, non professional gateway that allows visitors link to other sites. A typical general web portal offers services such as email, links to search engines, blog, chat rooms, online messengers, news. A general portal is not targeted to a specific group of people with special interests, and aimed to provide their services to general Internet users. People often set up a web portal as the first page of their web browser. This results in the use of web portals for a considerable amount of time everyday. People may use web portal for various reasons. Their motivations are also important determinants of the use. For general web usage, various types of motivations in web usage have been identified. Although it is clear that using web portals is an important activity for many people, little is known regarding the influence of these determinants on a general web portal use. Since many people spend a significant of their time on the use of web portals everyday, it becomes important to investigate what motivates people to use web portals. In this study, the influence of motivations on intention-to-use was investigated. For this purpose, various discourses of information system motivations were considered. In the following sections, theoretical foundations of this research problem will be discussed (see Fig. 1). Full-size image (25 K) Fig. 1. Research model.

The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of information products from the end-users’ perspective and to measure their impact on intention to use. Using a popular and general web portal (Excite.com) as an information product, the objective was achieved in that the research identified four significant motivations (social escapism, information, social, and interactive control) which were found to be significantly related to intention-to-use. Among various determinants, social escapism motivation most significantly influenced intention-to-use of web portals. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the intention-to-use of web portals. Future studies should have a specific focus: the characteristics of web portals that correlate it to being a social computing tool should be investigated.