Web-Store Aesthetics in E- Retailing: A Conceptual Framework and Some Theoretical Implications

Academy of Marketing Science Review,  2007  by Tractinsky, Noam,  Lowengart, Oded

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Designing Web-based stores is a multidisciplinary endeavor that involves diverse areas such as marketing, information technology, and HCI. The intriguing point about such an endeavor is that those fields have traditionally been occupied with different sets of goals and success criteria. Thus, for example, the field of marketing has been involved in studying various strategies of persuasion and of influencing consumers, e.g., by advertising, product design, store layout, and atmospherics (e.g., Bloch 1995; Kotler and Rath 1984; Russell and Pratt 1980; Whitney 1988). Much of the research and practice in marketing focuses on consumer emotions and their role in the shopping process (Meloy 2000; Pham 2004; Schmitt and Simonson 1997). Some marketing techniques even attempt to make information processing or shopping processes even less efficient for various reasons (Hoyer and MacInnis 2001; Levy and Weitz 1998; Russo 1977; Schroeder 2002). In contrast, Information Systems (IS) and HCI research have traditionally been dedicated to the study and to the practice of accurate, fast, and error-free information processing and task execution (e.g., Butler 1996; Card, Moran and Newell 1983).

Thus, the marriage of these contrasting disciplines in a new business model is challenging for both research and practice (Wind and Mahajan 2002). Currently, only a scant amount of research on the merger of these two distinct fields exists (Barwise et al. 2002; Vergo et al. 2003). Attempts to study the design aspects of retail Web sites have stressed aspects of information content and its instrumentality to consumer cognition and decision processes, as well as usability issues, such as ease of navigation and interface consistency (e.g., Bellman, Loshe and Johnson 1999; Lohse, Bellmand and Johnson 2000; Lohse and Spiller 1998; Nielsen 2000; Spiller and Lohse 1998; Spool et al. 1998). By and large, this view conforms to the HCI and IS paradigms, which focus on completing transactions effectively and efficiently. This view, however, overlooks the fact that the shopping activity "is not merely an exercise in acquisition, but a pleasurable avocation" (Gumpert and Drucker 1992, p.189), and that "shopping is ...a way of interacting with others." (Fiske, Hodge, and Turner 1987, p.96). Thus, viewing e-commerce site design as an extension of traditional design of computer-based applications ignores what the fields of marketing, advertising, and consumer behavior have long recognized: the retail environment has a major role in affecting consumers' psychological and social needs, as well as their eventual shopping behavior (Levy and Weitz 1998; Martineau 1958).

Recent research in HCI, however, points towards potential convergence between HCI and Marketing. Tractinsky and Rao (2001) suggested that computer users, particularly those who seek online substitutes to the physical shopping experience, would value aesthetic designs just like consumers of other commodities (e.g., Darden and Babin 1994; Jordan 1998). Affective properties of the shopping environment, including its aesthetic aspects, have been foci of research in the fields of marketing and consumer behavior (Donovan and Rossiter 1982; Gilboa and Rafaeli 2004; Holbrook and Hirschman 1982; Martineau 1958; Russell and Pratt 1980; Schroeder 2002). Other aspects of aesthetics in the marketing literature include the repositioning of products as a result of aesthetic flaws (Kotler and Mantrala 1985), marketing of aesthetic products (Holbrook 1982), and the aesthetic consequences of product prototypicality (Veryzer and Hutchinson 1998) and product complexity (Cox and Cox,2002).