Future Trends and Research Directions

Web marketing research in profiling user reactions to Websites or home pages has been largely observational (Chen & Wells, 1999; Eighmey, 1997; Lohse & Spiller, 1998).

To answer the question what "effect" a certain presentation's attribute has on attitudinal outcomes in the hypermedia environment requires controlled experiments that can be used in cross group comparisons. This line of research is gradually appearing in the literature recently (Coyle & Thorson, 2001; Gao, 2002; Li & Bukovac, 1999). This chapter advocates the line of research that explores the effects of different combinations of elements in this new medium. Such effects are in general considered hard to predict yet necessary for Web designers to test in order to achieve whatever goal they have in mind (Coyle & Thorson, 2001). Both interactivity and humor have been considered in the traditional advertising and marketing research to influence their respective dependent variables by implicit assumptions or research results. For example, effects of humor have been studied in past research of marketing and advertising (Weinberger & Spotts, 1989).

The advantage of experimental studies is their ability to validate causal relationships between the treatment effects and the dependent variables. Experimental research, though limited in scope, goes beyond the predictive powers of observational research. In completely randomized design fixed-factor experiments, the differences in dependent variables can be reasonably attributed to the participants' membership in different treatment groups and thus a causal effect between the treatment factor and the dependent variable can be validated (Hildebrand, 1986; McCall, 2001).

Future research should explore various combinations of presentation attributes like interactive features and humor as fixed factors. Future studies can also explore the effect of information content design features in varying degrees of information saturation at the site. Data collection should be broadly based. Researchers should also take advantage of the convenience of Web surveys techniques, and consider non-intrusive means of collection usage and exploration data through click streams. This chapter tries to contribute to the theories and constructs in e-commerce in a practical way. Research findings will add value to providing guidance to Internet marketers and technical designers alike, in future commercial Website design and Web marketing and promotions.