The Impact of Online Store Atmospherics on Consumer Behavioral Intentions: Cognition, Emotion,and Shopping Value as Mediators

• Main Authors: Su-wen Chen, 陳素雯
• Other Authors: Hsin Hsin Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/86812204112623151075

博士 === 國立成功大學 === 企業管理學系碩博士班 === 97 === Store atmospherics as well as consumer cognition, emotion, shopping value, and shopping motivation have been recognized as critical factors which affect consumer behavioral intentions in a traditional retail context. Given the recent explosive growth online retailing, the effects of online store atmospherics on consumer behavioral intentions have received increasing managerial and research attention. However, previous studies do not offer an overall framework for explaining how online store atmospherics affects consumers’ internal states, and in turn, their behavioral intentions. Specifically, the complicated interwoven relationships among those factors have not yet been fully uncovered and understood in the online retail context. Therefore, this study proposes an integrated research model for the purpose of testing the relationships among online store atmospheric cues (e.g., website design, social, ambient, and brand cues), consumers’ internal states (e.g., cognition, emotion, and perceived shopping value), and behavioral intentions, which is based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework. In addition, this study adopts shopping motivation as a moderator variable and attempts to examine its effect on the relationships between online store atmospherics and consumers’ cognition and emotion. The analytical results demonstrate that an online store’s atmospherics and its website brand simultaneously affect consumers’ cognition and emotion, and in turn consumers’perceptions of utilitarian and hedonic value, and consequently their behavioral intentions toward the online store. Specifically, this study found that website interactivity has the biggest effect on consumers’ cognition, followed by site appearance, and then content design, while appearance exerts the strongest effect on consumers’ emotion, followed by interactivity, and then structural design. In addition, the results show that consumers’cognition and utilitarian value directly affect consumers’ purchase and patronage intention,while consumers’ emotion and hedonic value directly influence consumers’ desire to stayin the online store. This study may contribute to a further understanding of the effect of online store atmospheric cues on consumer cognition, emotion, and perceived shopping value, and in turn, the behavioral intentions of consumer in an online retail context. In addition, this study also contribute to shedding light on some important issues (i.e., consumers’ purchase experience with the online store they are visiting and their shopping motivation) related to online store atmospherics and consumer responses that have not been addressed by previous studies. The results of this study may be important for managers of online stores as they decide how to allocate resources for the design of retail web environments that will raise the likelihood of purchases.