Investigation On Shopping Websites’ Online Review System Features:the Evolution And Consumer’s Adaptive Use

With the rapid growth of online shopping and the sweeping progress of Web2.0, consumers have becoming accustomed to articulating shopping experience trough Internet. Such contents were usually called "online review" or "electronic word-of-mouth"(eWoM). They can provide user-oriented description of products in terms of usage situations, and measure the product performance from a user’s perspective. Therefore, online reviews seem to be more trustworthy than any other advertisements, and show a increasing strongly impact on consumers purchase decision. Nowadays, online review has impact on personal decision as well as the fate of various products.Today, the convergence of social media and electronic commerce has facilitated the spread of online reviews’influence. The volume, format as well as quantity of platform for online reviews are enriched. Online review, as one type of information resource, is showing its value in daily life and business competition. This phenomenon brings us not only convenience in online opinion searching, but also challenge such as the online review system (ORS) inefficiency caused by eWoM overload, eWoM manipulation and consumers’behavioral bias. As a response, in order to minimize such negative impacts, scholars and practitioners are motivated to develop useful tools for effective management of online review.Based on above research background, this dissertation takes shopping website’s ORS-the most common online consumer opinion source for online shoppers-as research object to conduct the whole research. It is organized following the view that the interactions among information, people, technology and management, as well as the interactions between consumer and system are two important procedures when dealing with ORS design issues. Taking the inseparable relationship between behavioral and design paradigm into account, this dissertation starts from the procedure and principle of ORS’s evolution and extends to triggers of consumers adaptive use when using ORS to find a path toward effective ORS. Finally, this study provides some guideline for ORS design issues. The dissertation is composed of four empirical studies:In Chapter2, a longitudinal analysis, using online review system on tycoon shopping websites as sample, about review system’s evolution based on I-model and an integrative model of impact of eWoM is conducted. Then the it provides a summary of emerging patterns. The evolution can be chronologically divided into germination stage, growth stage and integration stage. During this procedure, there is a reduction of influence exert by superficial attribute of review on decision; finally, in order to construct collaborative context and reduce consumers’cognitive efforts, more attention should paid to social interaction features and opinion mining when design the online review systems.Chapter3delivers an investigation on domestic consumers’perception of ORS. It employs two modified Kano models to investigate consumer’s evaluation of ORS features. The results indicate that most features, especially the filtering and sorting feature, have no significant direct impact on consumer satisfaction with ORS. However, some prominent features that decomposing review valence and text are identified, including multi-dimensional review, multi-dimensional rating et al., which may to some extent lead to the increase of consumer satisfaction.In Chapter4,"adaptive system use" is adapts to the context of ORS usage at first. Then, it presents the implication that triggers of adaptive system have on ORS design. After serious discussion about impact of perceived affordance on IT artifact, a model is proposed by incorporating affordance theory with adaptive system use (ASU) model to specify triggers that may motivate consumers to revise their features in use of ORS. Taking the ORS on online retailers as an example, empirical study of online shoppers in China was conducted by survey, and PLS-SEM is used to test related hypotheses. The finding suggests that perceived hedonic affordance, perceived utilitarian affordance, situational change as well as discrepancies are active impetus to ASU, by contrast, the results did not support the positive impact of perceived control on ASU. In addition to direct impacts, situational change exert its influence on ASU indirectly by rising discrepancies, meanwhile, perceived hedonic affordance, perceived utilitarian affordance can impact on ASU indirectly by motivating situational change.In Chapter5, the design science research paradigm of information system (IS) discipline and affordance-based design theory are incorporated with the findings drawing from previous chapters. A three dimensional adaptive conceptual framework is constructed, and several advices are put forward to enhance the design of ORS.The findings of this dissertation contribute to relate fields are as follows:(1) The exploration of ORS’s evolution and the identified principles could be good addition to the theoretical and practical knowledge of ORS. Besides, the findings draw from the investigation of consumer’s perception about ORS features can fill the research gap that previous studies are lack of using user perception metrics when evaluate the efficiency of IT artifact while dealing with design issues. All the findings have implication to future research.(2) The results about triggers of ORS adaptive use could be an evidence to show the validity of the original adaptive system use (ASU) model. In addition, an extension of original ASU model is proposed by incorporating perceived affordance, and both direct and indirect impacts of perceived affordance are confirmed in this dissertation. This finding could link behavioral research and design research in IS. Furthermore, these findings can enrich scholar’s understanding of ASU triggers, ASU mechanisms as well as the impact of affordance.(3) This dissertation provides design guidelines based on a framework focused on three adaptive procedures:"consumer-feature","feature-feature" and "affordance-affordance" to the implication of online review system.Finally, it is important to noted that there are several limitations in this dissertation:(1) Due to the restrict of data source, the granularity of period lag when investigation evolution process could be not very precise, and the scientific of survey samples need further improvement;(2) The validity and reliability of instrument used in investigating ORS adaptive use model need further test;(3) The effectiveness of proposed design guideline needs empirical examination.