A cognitive map simulation approach to adjusting the design factors of the electronic commerce web sites

The electronic commerce (EC) has been widely studied in the academic as well as practical fields. Especially, a lot of special topics regarding the EC such as B2C and B2B have been investigated in literature. However, there are much less studies about the EC sites themselves. Besides, only a few studies exist about the issues regarding how to adjust the design factors of the EC sites. The main objective of this study is to fill this research void by employing two techniques: (1) cognitive map and (2) linear structural relationship (LISREL). The cognitive map was used to operationalize the causal relationships among design factors of the EC sites, and investigate the simulation to find the optimal strategy of adjusting the design factors. The LISREL was performed to prove the proposed research model, where original Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) [Davis MIS Q. 13 (1989) 319] is adopted as a basic framework for providing causal relationships. Usable questionnaires were collected from 114 respondents who are proved to be qualified for this study. They were educated to surf two typical EC sites appropriately and tested before answering the questionnaires. Those respondents who completed questionnaires successfully were given a book coupon of 5$ equivalent. After LISREL experiments, the proposed research model was tested, and an adjacency matrix was induced which is to be used for the cognitive map simulation. With the adjacency matrix and 15 hypothetical market situations, the cognitive map simulations were successfully performed yielding that the proposed two techniques could be used for successfully adjusting the design factors of the EC sites under consideration in line with the changes in customers’ tastes and market situations. One of the noticeable practical advantages of this study is that decision makers can identify the most relevant design factors and thereby allocate limited resources to them reasonably by performing the cognitive map simulation in advance before doing design adjustment to the EC sites in actuality. q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.