A Hedonic/utilitarian Dual Mediation Hypothesis: the Role of Emotions and the Bi-dimensionality of Attitude in Website Effectiveness

Over the past few years, the communication world has attended the unprecedented growth of a new media, the Internet. Websites, one of the Internet’s main tools, are being widely used in the communication process carried out by companies through the virtual environment. For that reason, further research needs to be undertaken so as to identify and understand consumers’ behaviour online. In this paper we propose and test a conceptual model on website effectiveness in which we incorporate consumers’ cognitions and emotions as well as both the hedonic and utilitarian dimensions of attitude. Therefore, we present the Hedonic/Utilitarian Dual Mediation Hypothesis model, where the cognitive paradigm and the uni-dimensionality of attitude are overcome. Our results show that both types of responses play a key role in communication through websites, that there is a causal effect from emotions to cognitions, and the superiority of treating the attitude as a bi-dimensional construct in order to get a better understanding of consumer behavior.