J. Jahng et al., Effective design of electronic commerce environments: A proposed theory ofcongruence and an illustration, IEEE SYST A, 30(4), 2000, pp. 456-471
Citations number
78
Categorie Soggetti
AI Robotics and Automatic Control
Journal title
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS MAN AND CYBERNETICS PART A-SYSTEMS AND HUMANS
The advent of the Internet/World Wide Web (WWW) and its related technologie
s has created a new format of business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-co
nsumer (B2C) commerce; for instance, virtual shopping on the Internet withi
n the B2C domain. Such a concept of shopping requires a new paradigm of com
merce environments. Forecasts suggest that a major portion of total commerc
e in the U.S. during the early part of the next decade will be via the Net/
WWW. While the concerns of lack of security and privacy associated with the
Net still prevail these may have more to do with users perceptions than wi
th inadequate technological capabilities. Concurrently, however, we posit t
hat the current electronic commerce (EC) systems are not user-oriented lead
ing to less than dramatic growth in B2C, In a physical environment, consume
rs can touch and feel the products and freely communicate with sellers or t
heir representatives about the products they want to buy. On the contrary,
consumers in an EC environment find it difficult to deal with the inherent
nature of virtuality in their interaction. This is especially true in a poo
rly designed EC environment where users might be uncomfortable with the unc
ertainty and ambiguity caused by lack of interaction with products and sell
ers. For simple products this may not be a barrier whereas for complex prod
ucts this may create a significant barrier. Very few theoretical frameworks
exist in the EC literature that can effectively address the issue of desig
n of Web-based EC application systems for this new form of cyber commerce e
nvironment and make provisions to deal with the heterogeneous nature of bot
h products and consumers. In this study, we propose a conceptual framework
to address such an issue by drawing on insights from contingency research i
n information systems design and media choice behavior. The basic theme of
this model, called the congruence model, is that for an EC systems environm
ent to have favorable impact on a consumer, the system must have a good fit
with both the products/services that are sold/provided and the users it su
pports. An initial validity of this conceptual framework is demonstrated by
working with a few product and user types. A detailed evaluation of eight
different commercial web sites dealing with four different product categori
es provides additional support to the proposed theory. We expect our concep
tual model to spur significant future research on this important phenomenon
.