Citation
(2014), "Executive summary of “Consumer participation in online product recommendation services: augmenting the technology acceptance model”", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 28 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-07-2014-0257
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Executive summary of “Consumer participation in online product recommendation services: augmenting the technology acceptance model”
Article Type: Executive summary and implications for managers and executives From: Journal of Services Marketing, Volume 28, Issue 6
This summary has been provided to allow managers and executives a rapid appreciation of the content of the article. Those with a particular interest in the topic covered may then read the article in toto to take advantage of the more comprehensive description of the research undertaken and its results to get the full benefit of the material present.
If you are used to checking out what films, books, music or whatever are on sale at Amazon, you will also be used to recommendation messages saying things such as “Customers who bought this item also bought […] ”. Click onto a Web site such as http://www.myproductadvisor.com and you’ll be asked a few questions and guided around the Web site to help you find what you want.
This sort of consumer participation – sharing likes and choices which the magic of technology can then turn into electronic “word of mouth” – a well-known marketing strategy. Online product recommendation agents (RAs) have become increasingly available as an interactive aid to decision-making. The software-based technology that drives them is designed to help customers systematically and efficiently screen large sets of product alternatives and provide product recommendations based on consumer inputs. When customers use the Web sites, what’s known as collaborative and content filtering predict an individual’s preferences based on the preferences of other “like-minded” people.
However, questions are being asked as to whether or not this sort of consumer participation is a double-edged sword. When consumers spend time and effort in interacting with RAs and providing input to the questions raised by RAs, consumer participation becomes an inherent part of using RA technology. However, when using RAs, does it matter to what extent consumers participate? And does participation influence consumers’ evaluations of their RA use experiences? Consumer participation represents a source of uncertainty to employees and has been found to lead to employee feelings of role ambiguity and decreased job satisfaction. It has also been pointed out that the benefit of reduced costs from involving consumers as partial employees in service production and delivery might be overshadowed by risks associated with consumer participation.
Examining the impact of consumer participation and taking a consumer-centric perspective can further our understanding of RA use. In “Consumer participation in online product recommendation services: augmenting the technology acceptance model” Dr. Xiaojing Sheng and Dr. Mohammadali Zolfagharian test a proposed model that integrates consumer participation into the technology acceptance model (a theory for explaining and predicting technology acceptance and use). In so doing, they seek answers to the questions:
Does participation in using an RA affect consumers’ perceptions of the ease of use, usefulness and enjoyment in using the RA?
Do the positive effects of consumer participation widely documented in the services marketing literature also apply to the context of RA use?
The positive effect they found of consumer participation on enjoyment suggests that consumers enjoy interacting with and using an RA more so when they perceive they have highly participated. On the other hand, the greater a consumer participates, the lower the perceived ease of the use of the RA because more participation requires more time and effort. The dual-effect of consumer participation indicates the need to balance the level of participation required when using an RA. Allowing more room for consumers to participate and to be more involved in using an RA by asking more relevant yet interesting questions about their product preferences can promote the fun and enjoyment aspect of using the RA. At the same time, consumers should not be overburdened with too many questions or too much interaction, especially when such questions and interactions lie beyond consumer expectations.
The findings that perceived usefulness and enjoyment positively affected intention, and that enjoyment had both a direct and an indirect positive effect through perceived usefulness on intention speaks to the importance of perceived usefulness and enjoyment as two determinants of consumer intentions to reuse an RA.
Perceived ease of use did not impact intentions directly. Instead, the effect of perceived ease of use was channeled through perceived usefulness and enjoyment, which further attests to the criticality of perceived usefulness and enjoyment in determining whether a consumer will return and reuse an RA. Taken together, these findings suggest that the design of an RA needs to focus on enhancing the usefulness and enjoyment that consumers attribute to using the RA. This by no means suggests that perceived ease of use can be ignored in the design. Rather, making sure that an RA is easy to use and free of effort should be the starting point because perceived ease of use was shown to improve perceived usefulness and enjoyment of using the RA.
A strengthening effect of financial risk on the negative impact of consumer participation on perceived ease of use suggests that flexibility and adaptability need to be incorporated in the design of RAs. In other words, they should be designed in such a way that the user interface can change in response to the level of financial risk involved in a purchase. When financial risk is high, use of the RA should require even less effort from consumers to avoid escalating the negative impact of consumer participation on perceived ease.
To read the full article enter 10.1108/JSM-01-2014-0845 into your search engine.
(A preícis of the article “Consumer participation in online product recommendation services: augmenting the technology acceptance model”. Supplied by Marketing Consultants for Emerald.)