Journal Article

How website socialness leads to website use

Wakefield, Kirk L, Wang, Liz C, Wakefield, Robin L, Baker, Julie

2011

Overview

Website designers are beginning to incorporate social cues, such as helpfulness and familiarity, into e-commerce sites to facilitate the exchange relationship. Website socialness elicits a social response from users of the site and this response produces enjoyment. Users patronize websites that are exciting, entertaining and stimulating. The purpose of our study is to explore the effects of website socialness perceptions on the formation of users' beliefs, attitudes and subsequent behavioral intentions. We manipulate website socialness perceptions across two different online shopping contexts, one for functional products and the other for pleasure-oriented products, and draw from the responses of 300 Internet users. Our findings show that website socialness perceptions lead to enjoyment, have a strong influence on user intentions and these effects are invariant across shopping contexts.

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis,Palgrave Macmillan UK,Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subject: Analysis / Attitudes / Business and Management / Business Information Systems / Computers / Consumer behavior / Consumers / Cues / ease of use / Electronic commerce / Enjoyment / Familiarity / Helping behavior / Information Systems and Communication Service / Innovation/Technology Management / Interfaces / Internet / Language / Operations Research/Decision Theory / Original Article / Perceptions / Pleasure / Shopping / Social aspects / Social networks / Social response / social response theory / socialness / Studies / TAM / Technology Acceptance Model / Trade / Use / usefulness / Users / Web site design / Websites