Study Approach

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A set of sampling criteria was initially determined in order to identify the studies that formed the foundation for our research endeavor. First, we decided to include only those studies that have been published in major journals within the IS domain. Second, only studies published between 1995 and 2002 were included for further consideration. Third, we limited our focus to those electronic commerce studies that were conducted at the individual level unit of analysis. Hence, consumers or users of web technologies were the main subjects in these studies. Fourth, for a study to be included, it had to be based on empirical (quantitative) analysis. This allowed us to focus on empirically tested constructs and relationships rather than those that have only been conceptualized.

Based on the stated criteria, we conducted a thorough search of the following major IS journals: Communications of the ACM; Decision Sciences; Decision Support Systems; IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics; Information Systems Research; Information Technology and Management; Information and Management; International Journal of Electronic Commerce; Journal of End User Computing; Journal of Management Information Systems; and MIS Quarterly. These journals were considered to be mainstream IS journals that are appropriate outlets for research on online consumer behavior. Studies were located via computer searches of large bibliographic databases (UMI-Proquest and ScienceDirect) and by manually scanning the journals. For search of electronic databases, a list of keywords (e-commerce, electronic commerce, web site, technology acceptance model, World Wide Web, online, B2C, Internet, theory of planned behavior, consumer behavior, trust, etc.) in combination with the name of the journal was used for identification of the articles. Upon completion, a total of 42 nonredundant papers were identified for inclusion.

As shown in Table 1, the most popular outlets for online consumer behavior research were Information Systems Research (11 articles), International Journal of Electronic Commerce (11 articles), and Information and Management (nine articles). Two recent special issues on e-commerce metrics were the main sources of the Information Systems Research articles. As shown in Figure 1, the analysis of the studies published in those IS journals over time confirmed a recent surge of research interest on this subject. While the number of articles published each year was increasing over time, most articles were published in 2000 and thereafter (seven articles before 2000, seven articles in 2000, seven articles in 2001, and 21 articles in 2002).

Table 1: Number of Online Consumer Behavior Studies Published Between 1997 and 2002 in IS Journals

Journals	Count
Information Systems Research	11
International Journal of Electronic Commerce	11
Information & Management	9
Communications of the ACM	3
MIS Quarterly	2
IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics	2
Journal of Management Information Systems	1
Information Technology and Management	1
Decision Support Systems	1
Journal of End User Computing	1
Total	42

Figure 1: Yearly Number of Online Consumer Behavior Studies Published in IS Journals

Two researchers read each of the papers and independently coded and tabulated the following items in independent tables: methodology, sample size, sample source, independent and dependent variables, task, theory basis, and study findings. The coders then met to compare the tables and resolve the discrepant cases in order to reach a consensus in their categorization and tabulation, as shown in Table 2. The overall inter-rater agreement between the two coders for the categorization of study methodology, sample source, theory basis, and task was 94%. Analysis showed that the most common research method is survey (23 studies), followed by laboratory experiments (15 studies), combined approaches (three studies), and secondary data analysis (1 study). Half of the studies used consumers and the other half used student (including undergraduate and graduate) subjects as the source of samples. A total number of 27,202 individuals participated in the studies that were included in the final set. Laboratory experiment-based studies either used actual web sites (web sites for books, airline tickets, legal services, automotives, car rental, etc.) or resorted to simulated replicas of actual web sites. Books were the most popular product type used in the studies. Other product types included CDs, airline tickets, used laptop computers, videos, and flowers. In terms of virtual products, legal services, e-banking services, financial products, and news services were employed by the studies. Subjects were typically asked to respond to the instrument based on their immediate prior experience or their general impression regarding behavior in an online environment. The tasks ranged from rating web site attributes that may influence their behavior to making purchases for a specific product.

Table 2: Summary Review of Online Consumer Behavior Literature

No.	Year	Cite	Method	N	Sample Source	IV	DV	Task	Theory Basis	Findings
1	1997	Jarvenpaa & Todd	Experiment	220	Primary household shoppers	Product perceptions, shopping experience, customer service, & consumer risk	Attitude and intentions toward electronic shopping	N/A	Retail patronage (Arnold et al., 1978)	Product perceptions, shopping experience, and customer service were found to affect consumer behavior.
2	1998	Agarwal & Parsad	Survey	175	Part-time MBA students	Computer playfulness & personal innovativeness	Acceptance behavior	N/A	TAM (Davis, 1989) & Innovation diffusion theory (Rogers, 1983)	Personal innovativeness construct was developed and validated and was proposed to affect individual perceptions about a new IT.
3	1998	Liang & Huang	Survey	85	Internet users	Uncertainty, asset specificity & transaction cost	Perceived acceptance of electronic channel	Product purchase: books, shoes, toothpaste, microwave & flower	Transaction cost economics (Williamson, 1979, 1985)	Experienced shoppers were found to be more concerned about the uncertainty in electronic shopping, which subsequently increased transaction costs and reduced acceptance of electronic channels.
4	1998	Parthasarathy & Bhattacherjee	Survey	145	Consumers	External influence, interpersonal influence, utilization, usefulness, ease of use, compatibility, & network externality Time of adoption, external influence, interpersonal influence, & utilization	Discontinuers and continuing adopters Discontinuer type: replacement Vs disenchantment	Evaluation of an online service	Innovation diffusion theory (Rogers, 1983; Brancheau & Wetherbe 1990)	External influence, interpersonal influence, utilization, usefulness, compatibility and network externality were found to be the distinguishing factors between discontinuers and continuing adopters. Time of adoption, interpersonal influence and utilization explained whether discontinuation results from replacement or disenchantment.
5	1998	Westland & Au	Experiment	116	Under-graduate students	Catalog look up interface, bundles (pre-selected assortment or kits) and virtual reality based store fronts	Money spent, time spent & number of items	N/A	Virtual reality shopping behavior (Burke, 1996)	No difference was found in the amount of money spent or item purchases by customers interacting with three different types of Web interfaces, but subjects did spend much more time while interacting with a virtual reality interface.
6	1999	Bellman, Lohse, & Johnson	Survey	10,000	Household shoppers	Looking for product information, wired lifestyle, discretionary time, email use, demographic variables (gender, education, age, income) & privacy	Online purchase & annual online spending	N/A	Shopping behavior life cycle (Rich, 1968)	Wired life style and time starvation were found to be the most important predictors of online purchase behavior. Privacy and security issues were important but were becoming increasing less important predictors of online shopping.
12	2000	Limayem, Khalifa, & Frini	Survey	705	Web shoppers	Personal innovativeness, subjective norms, behavioral control, perceived consequences, & intention	Internet shopping	N/A	Theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991)	Shopping behavior was found to influence intentions and behavioral controls. Intentions were determined by attitudes and were also moderately affected by perceived consequences, personal innovativeness and subjective norms. Attitudes were strongly influenced by perceived consequences and moderately by personal innovativeness
13	2000	Liu & Arnett	Survey	119	Webmasters	Information quality, learning capability, playfulness, system quality, system use, & service quality	Web site success	N/A	TAM (Davis, 1989)	Information service quality, system use, playfulness, and system design were found to impact Web site success.
14	2000	Otto, Najdawi, & Caron	Experiment	60	Under-graduate students	Download time	Web-user satisfaction, format, ease of use, graphics appeal, responsiveness	N/A	User information satisfaction (Doll & Torkzadeh, 1988, 1994)	Delays of 15 seconds or less did not impact a user's overall level of satisfaction.
15	2000	Vellido, Lisboa, & Meehan	Survey	2,180	Web users	Shopping experience, consumer risk perception, customer service & product perception	Propensity to buy online	N/A	Consumer's reaction to the Web (Jarvenpaa & Todd, 1997)	Shopping experience (compatibility), consumer risk perception (trust and security), affordability, ease of use (effort), and customer service (effort, responsiveness and empathy) were found to be the main predictors of online purchase behavior. Demographic variables such as age, income, and Web usage pattern did not add to the predictive power of the model.
16	2001	Barnes & Vidgen	Survey	96	Students	Tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, & empathy	N/A	Evaluation of Web site selling books	SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al., 1988)	WebQual is developed and used to evaluate Internet bookshops' Web site quality.
17	2001	Griffith, Krampf, & Palmer	Experiment	336	Students	Consumer involvement with retailer's offerings, product evaluation, attitude change	Shopping intentions	Evaluation of Web based and print catalogs	Interface-involvement theory (Reeves & Nass, 1996)	A print physical-medium interface was found to be more effective than a Web-based physical-medium interface in stimulating consumer involvement with retailer offerings and a positive consumer response.
18	2001	Lee & Turban	Survey	405	Students	Trustworthiness of Internet merchant (ability, integrity and benevolence), trustworthiness of Internet shopping medium (technical competence, reliability, and medium understanding), & contextual factors (effectiveness of third party certification & effectiveness of security infrastructure)	Consumer trust in Internet shopping	N/A	Trust (Mayer et al., 1995)	Merchant integrity was found to be a major positive determinant of consumer trust in Internet shopping, and that its effect was moderated by the individual consumer's trust propensity.
19	2001	Liao & Cheung	Survey	312	Household members	Price (market participation and retail price), shopping experience, vendor quality, IT education Internet usage, & network speed	Willingness to shop online	N/A	IS and Marketing literature	Transaction security, retail price, and shopping experience were found to negatively impact willingness to purchase on the Internet. Vendor quality, IT education and training, and level of Internet usage were positively related to willingness to purchase. The network speed had no significant impact.
20	2001	Moon & Kim	Survey	152	Graduate students	Ease of use, usefulness, playfulness & attitude toward use	Behavioral intention to use the Web	N/A	TAM (Davis, 1989)	The study extended and validated the TAM within a Web context by introducing playfulness as a new factor that reflected the user's intrinsic belief in Web acceptance.
21	2001	Ramaswami, Stader, & Brett	Survey	154	Users of financial services	Agent performance (task and return performance) satisfaction, conflict, knowledge of financial products, confidence in decision making, & time availability	Willingness to use online channel, searches for financial information & online-purchase	Product purchase: financial products	Motivation-ability-opportunity framework (Macinnis et al., 1991)	Performance of the agent was related to higher levels of online information search, but did not impact online purchase. Disagreements between the client and the agent acted as an antecedent to use of online channel and online purchase. Knowledge and confidence were not related to information search or online purchases. Willingness to use the online channel was positively related to information search but not actual purchases. Time availability, money, age, and amount of advice by the agent were not found to be significant.
22	2002	Agarwal & Venkatesh	Survey	1475	Household consumers & investors	Content, ease of use, promotion, made for the medium, & emotion	Web site usability	Evaluation of Web sites: airline, bookstore, auto manufactures, and car rental	Human Computer Interaction literature and Microsoft usability guidelines	Content was found to be equally important across all industries and tasks. Customer deemed ease of use to be more important than investors. In contrast, investors found promotion to be more important than customers.
23	2002	Aladwani & Palvia	Survey	101 127	Students	Technical adequacy, specific content, content quality, appearance	N/A	Evaluation of Web site: banks, bookshops, car, and electronics	Web quality literature	Perceived Web quality is conceptualized as consisting of technical adequacy (security, navigation, search facilities), specific content (general information, contact information, policies), content quality (accuracy, completeness, clarity, currency, usefulness, and conciseness), and appearance (attractiveness, colors, multimedia).
24	2002	Ba & Pavlou	Experiment & Field Study	393	e-Bay's users	Feedback profile, trust in seller	Price premium	Product purchase: auction goods	Literature on trust & rating systems	Appropriate feedback mechanism induced calculus-based credibility trust without repeated interactions between two transacting parties. Trust mitigated information asymmetry by reducing transaction-specific risks, which eventually generated price premiums for reputable sellers.
25	2002	Bhattacherjee	Survey	147	Evening MBA students	Ability, integrity, benevolence & overall trust	Willingness to transact	Product purchase: books and bank account	Nomological model of trust	Scales for ability, integrity, benevolence, and overall trust dimensions were developed and validated within the Web context.
26	2002	Chau, Cole, Massey, Weiss, & O'Keefe	Experiment & Survey for each study	119 (USA) 150 (Hong Kong)	Students	Culture and purpose of Internet use	Attitude toward Internet use	Evaluation of Web site: automobile (Ford)	Literature on culture	Subjects in the U.S. had a higher level of use of the Web for electronic commerce and information search, while subjects in Hong Kong used the Web more for hobby activities and social communication.
27	2002	Chen, Gillenson, & Sherrell	Survey	253	Web shoppers	Compatibility, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude toward use, & intention to use	Use (purchase or seek information)	Product purchase: multiple (Books, CDs etc.)	TAM (Davis, 1989) & Innovation diffusion theory (Rogers, 1983)	Compatibility, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use were found to predict attitude toward using a Web site. Compatibility and perceived ease of use also impacted perceived usefulness. Attitude determined intention of use, which in return predicted actual use.
28	2002	Chen & Hitt	Secondary Data Analysis	2902	Investors	Demographics, Web site usage, change in usage, use of multiple brokers, Web site quality, product breadth, cost, personalization, ease of use, minimum deposit, & investment in retention	Switching & attrition	Product purchase: use of online brokerage services	Random utility modeling framework (McFadden, 1974)	Usage and change in usage were found to be good predictors of switching and attrition. Site quality, minimum balance requirement and costs also influenced customer behavior. The low minimum balance attracted customers but also subsequently increased their propensity to switch.
29	2002	Devaraj, Fan, & Kohli	Experiment	134	Consumers	Ease of use, usefulness, uncertainty, asset specificity, empathy, responsiveness, reliability, & assurance	Channel satisfaction & channel preference	Product purchase: books and CDs	TAM (Davis, 1989), Transaction cost economics (Williamson, 1979), & SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al., 1988)	Technology acceptance and transaction cost economics variables were found to be good predictors of channel satisfaction. Empathy and assurance were the only variables in SERVQUAL that predicted channel satisfaction. It was found that the integrated model that combined the three models provided a better picture of factors that affected channel satisfaction, which impacted channel preference.
30	2002	Koufaris	Experiment	280	Web shoppers	Product involvement, Web skills, value and non-value added services, & challenges Perceived control, Shopping enjoyment, Concentration, Perceived usefulness, & Perceived ease of use	Unplanned purchases & intention to return	Product purchase: books (bookamillion.com)	TAM (Davis, 1989) & Flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988)	Product involvement, Web skills, and challenges impact concentration, while these factors along with value and non-value added services impacted shopping enjoyment. None of the variables in the model significantly predicted unplanned purchases. Shopping enjoyment and usefulness were found to be significant predictors of intention to return. It was concluded that the interface and Web functionalities might be equally important to retain a customer as compared with customer service and lower prices.
31	2002	Koufaris, Kambil, & LaBarbera	Survey	332	Consumers	Search mechanism used, positive challenges, shopping enjoyment, perceived control	Unplanned purchases & intention to return	Product purchase: video (Kozmo.com)	Theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) & Flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988)	Perceived control and shopping enjoyment impacted the intention of new Web customers to return, but did not influence repeat customers to return. It was also found that Web store that utilized value added search mechanisms and presented a positively challenging experience improved customer's shopping enjoyment.
32	2002	Liang & Lai	Experiment	30	Students	Motivators, hygiene factors, & media richness	Purchase from an online store, future visit, & future purchase	Product purchase: books	Online consumer behavior literature	Motivators (search engines, shopping carts), hygiene (security, risk), and media richness (feedback, chat channels) were found to be good predictors of channel choice. Motivators were found to be the most important factors followed by media richness and hygiene factors.
33	2002	Liao & Cheung	Survey	323	Consumers	Security, accuracy, speed of transaction, user involvement, convenience, ease of use, & experience	Willingness to use e-banking	Product purchase: e-banking	Literature on information technology use and cognitive analysis	Security, accuracy, speed of transaction, user involvement, and ease of use were found to play a significant role in predicting willingness to use Internet based e-banking.
34	2002	Lu & Lin	Experiment	145	Under-graduate students	Content belief, context belief, infrastructure belief, & customer attitude	Customer loyalty	Evaluation of an e-publishing Web site (news)	Rayport & Sviokla model & Theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975)	Content belief, context belief, and infrastructure belief were found to predict consumer's attitude, which subsequently impacted their loyalty. Content belief also had a direct effect on customer loyalty.
35	2002	McKinney, Yoon, & Zahedi	Survey Experiment	568 312	Students consumers	Web information quality and Web service quality	Web customer satisfaction	Product search: airline tickets	End user satisfaction literature, IS use and success literature, and expectancy disconfirmation paradigm	The difference between information quality expectation and information quality perceived performance led to information quality disconfirmation. Similarly, the difference between service quality expectation and service quality perceived performance led to service quality disconfirmation. Both these factors impacted Web information quality and Web service quality and these factors then determined Web customer satisfaction.
36	2002	McKnight, Choudhury, & Kacmar	Experiment	1403	Students	Disposition to trust, (control for personal innovativeness), institution-based trust (control for general we experience), trusting beliefs, & trusting intentions (control for perceived site quality)	Trust related behavior	Evaluation of a Web site offering legal advice	Theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975)	The trust construct is proposed and validated as a multi-dimensional construct (disposition to trust, institution-based trust, trusting beliefs, and trusting intentions).
37	2002	Palmer	Experiment	35 30 35	Undergraduate, graduate, executive MBA students	Download delay, navigation/organization, interactivity, responsiveness, & information/content	Web site success	Evaluation of 750 Web sites	Web site usability and design literature & Media richness theory	Results from three studies suggested that Web site success was significantly associated with Web site download delay, navigation, content, interactivity, and responsiveness.
38	2002	Ranganathan & Ganapathy	Survey	214	Online shoppers	Information content, design, security, & privacy	Intent to purchase	N/A	Literature on Web site characteristics and functionalities	Information content, design, security, and privacy were found to discriminate between shopper who had high intent to purchase and low intent to purchase. In terms of order of importance, security had the highest ranking followed by privacy, design, and information content.
39	2002	Slyke, Comunale, & Belanger	Survey	511	Students	Gender, full-time work experience, computer use, major, age, email use, word processing use, Web browser use, prior Web experience, access to credit card and access to the Web	Intention to shop on the Web	N/A	Innovation diffusion theory (Rogers, 1983)	Gender, computer use, email use, prior Web use, and access to credit card were found to be significant predictors of intent to shop on the Web. Men rated compatibility, relative advantage, result demonstrability, and trustworthiness of Web shopping higher, and its complexity lower than did women. It was argued that women viewed shopping as a social activity and were less technology oriented as compared to men.
40	2002	Stafford & Stern	Survey	329	Students	Affinity with the computer, intention to use, ease of use, perceived usefulness, & involvement	Bid behavior	Product purchase: auction goods	TAM (Davis, 1989), Affinity theory (Rubin, 1981, 1984), & Involvement theory (Zaichkowsky, 1985)	Propensity to bid in online auctions was influenced by acceptance of technology, involvement with auctions, and affinity for computers.
41	2002	Torkzadeh & Dhillon	Survey	421	Students	Online payment, Internet product choice, Internet vendor trust, shopping travel, & Internet shipping errors	N/A	N/A	Keeney's (1999) framework	Two sets of measures, means objectives and fundamental objectives, were developed in this study. Means objectives were measured in terms of Internet product choice, online payment, Internet vendor trust, shopping travel, and Internet shopping errors. Fundamental objectives were measured in terms of Internet shopping convenience, Internet ecology, Internet customer relation, and Internet product value.
42	2002	Zhang & von Dran	Survey	67	Graduate students	Up-to-date, accuracy, multiple sources, easy to navigate, & timely	N/A	Evaluation of a Web site providing news (CNN.com)	Kano model (Kano et al., 1984)	Kano model of quality was used in an exploratory investigation of customer quality expectations of a specific type of cite (CNN.com). It was found that customer's quality expectations changed over time, and thus no single quality checklist would be good for an extended time period.

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