Customer Satisfaction and Purchasing Behaviour in a Web-based Shopping Environment

This paper provides an empirical analysis of consumer behaviour in a computer mediated shopping environment. The focus is on the relationship between the shopping experience, i.e. the level of customer satisfaction, and the outcome of the shopping process , the amount of purchases made. This research is a part of the VRFlow research project, in which one of the key research areas is the effect of enhanced navigational features through hypertext functionality on consumers' purchasing behaviour. Because the Internet attracts an increasing number of competing vendors, a prerequisite for success in online business is an understanding of consumer behaviour. Although consumer behaviour in e-commerce contexts is essentially the same as any other consumer behaviour, there are certain vendor controlled, technology related features that play a part in consumer decision making. Turban et al. (2000) introduce a model developed by Matthew K. O. Lee, which provides a comprehensive framework for Web purchasing situations. The model suggests that in addition to selection and different properties of the goods themselves, there are various features related to the Web shop, such as speed of operation and the ease of use, that determine the navigational experience of the customer. Navigational experience is, in turn, one of the key determinants of overall shopping experience, or customer satisfaction. The key implication of Lee's model is that increased customer satisfaction leads to an increase in the likelihood of a repeat purchase. Existing empirical evidence supports the close relationship between shopping experience and attitude towards Web purchasing. For example, based on their survey Jarvenpaa and Todd (1997) concluded that, in order to increase shopping activity, Web vendors need to concentrate on different means of enhancing the Web shopping experience. Hoffmann and Novak (1997) found that the navigational experience, or more specically the ow experience, has a positive effect on the likelihood of making purchases from an online store. The concept of ow was rst dened by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1977) and later elaborated on (1990). He denes it as 'the holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement'. He further specied the denition by stating that ow can only occur when the challenges and skills are in balance and above a certain threshold level. For more on the concept of ow see e.g. Hoffman and Novak (1997). White and Manning (1997) also found a positive relationship between the navigational features of a Web shop and the likelihood …