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Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
Volume 5, Issue 2 

"Electronic Commerce and the Web"

In This Issue:

Community Level Socio-Economic Impacts of Electronic Commerce  Charles Steinfield  Visiting Professor Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management Delft University of Technology Pamela Whitten  Department of Telecommunication Michigan State University  As electronic commerce grows, an important socio-economic side effect will be increased competition with the traditional businesses in any given local community. Our research suggests that local merchants typically go online in order to better access distant markets, but are often unprepared to cater to remote customers and hence do not fare well. In this paper, we suggest that it is important to consider now how electronic commerce may influence the health of local economies. Despite the rhetoric that electronic commerce is free from the constraints of geography, we argue that there are good reasons to reconsider the role of physical location in making e-commerce policies. We show that using transaction cost and competitive advantage approaches, supplemented by perspectives from research on social networks and trust, it is possible to develop locally sensitive Web strategies for businesses in a given community. We highlight generic strategies that local businesses can use to leverage their physical presence in a market with electronic commerce in order to better compete with distant Web-based companies.    Internet retail store design: How the user interface influences traffic and sales Gerald L. Lohse  Research Director, Wharton Forum on Electronic Commerce The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania  Peter Spiller McKinsey & Company, Inc.  Given the resources needed to launch a retail store on the Internet or change an existing online storefront design, it is important to allocate product development resources to interface features that actually improve store traffic and sales. We identified features that impact store traffic and sales using regression models of 1996 store traffic and dollar sales as dependent variables and interface design features such as number of links into the store, hours of promotional ads, number of products, and store navigation features as the independent variables. Product list navigation features that reduce the time to purchase products online account for 61% of the variance in monthly sales. Other factors explaining the variance in monthly sales include: number of hyperlinks into the store (10%), hours of promotion (4%) and customer service feedback (1%). These findings demonstrate that the user interface is an essential link between the customer and the retail store in Web-based shopping environments.    Browsers or Buyers in Cyberspace? An Investigation of Factors Influencing Electronic Exchange  Vanitha Swaminathan Assistant Professor of Marketing Isenberg School of Management University of Massachusetts-Amherst  Elzbieta Lepkowska-White Assistant Professor of Marketing Department of Management and Business University of Massachusetts-Amherst  Bharat P. Rao Assistant Professor of Management Institute for Technology and Enterprise Polytechnic University  In its current form, the Internet is primarily a source of communication, information and entertainment but increasingly also a vehicle for commercial transactions. An understanding of reasons for purchasing on the World Wide Web is particularly relevant in the context of predictions made regarding electronic shopping in the future. In the paper, we focus on some of the antecedents to electronic exchange in the online context. In particular, what are some of the factors influencing online purchasing behavior? What is the role of privacy and security concerns in influencing actual purchase behavior? How do vendor and customer characteristics influence consumers' propensity to engage in transactions on the Internet? We analyze secondary data from an e-mail survey. The study has implications for both theory and practice. The findings extend our knowledge of factors influencing marketing exchange from the traditional setting to the internet context. In addition, the findings regarding factors enhancing the propensity to shop online have implications for internet retailers seeking to enlarge their online customer base.    The Impact of Perceived Channel Utilities, Shopping Orientations, and Demographics on the Consumer’s Online Buying Behavior  Hairong Li  Michigan State University Department of Advertising  Cheng Kuo  National Chengchi University Department of Advertising, Taipei, Taiwan  Martha G. Russell  The University of Texas at Austin      This study proposed and tested a model of consumer online buying behavior. The model posits that consumer online buying behavior is affected by demographics, channel knowledge, perceived channel utilities, and shopping orientations. Data were collected by a research company using an online survey of 999 U.S. Internet users, and they were cross-validated with other similar national surveys before being used to test the model. Findings of the study indicated that education, convenience orientation, experience orientation, channel knowledge, perceived distribution utility, and perceived accessibility are robust predictors of online buying status (frequent online buyer, occasional online buyer, or non-online buyer) of Internet users. Implications of the findings and directions for future research were discussed.    Between Flexibility and Automation: An Evaluation of Web Technology from a Business Process Perspective  Judith Gebauer  Fisher Center for IT & Marketplace Transformation University of California at Berkeley, USA  Arno Scharl  Department of Management Information Systems Vienna University of Economics & Business Administration, Austria  Web information systems hold great potential to streamline and improve business-to-business-transactions. However, not all Web technologies are equally suited to support the different business processes throughout their distinct phases. In this paper, we outline a framework to improve the conceptual design of Web-based information systems to support business-to-business transactions. The framework consists of three parts. The first part delineates the different phases of commercial transaction processes, part two introduces a model to evaluate process infrastructures, and part three categorizes Web technologies and underlying communication models. By combining the three parts, we can match available systems with the requirements of transaction processes in a structured way. This integration allows improving long-term process efficiency, and helps to identify areas where the information system functionality is currently inadequate.    Consumer Trust in an Internet Store: A Cross-Cultural Validation  Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa  Department of Management Science and Information Systems University of Texas  Noam Tractinsky Industrial Engineering and Management Ben-Gurion University  Many have speculated that trust plays a critical role in stimulating consumer purchases over the Internet. Most of the speculations have rallied around U.S. consumers purchasing from U.S.--based online merchants. The global nature of the Internet raises questions about the robustness of trust effects across cultures. Culture may also affect the antecedents of consumer trust; that is, consumers in different cultures might have differing expectations of what makes a web merchant trustworthy. Here we report on a cross-cultural validation of an Internet consumer trust model. The model examined both antecedents and consequences of consumer trust in a Web merchant. The results provide tentative support for the generalizability of the model.