Shaping e-retailer’s website personality: The importance of experiential marketing

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 20 (2013) 102–110

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Shaping e-retailer’s website personality: The importance of experiential marketing Saeed Shobeiri a,1, Michel Laroche b,n, Ebrahim Mazaheri c,2 a

Department of Marketing, Universite´ de Sherbrooke, 2500 Boul. de l’Universite´, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada-J1K 2R1 Department of Marketing, John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve West, Montre´al, QC, Canada H3G 1M8 c Laurentian University, School of Commerce and Administration, One Georgian Drive, Barrie, ON, Canada L4M 3X9 b

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 9 April 2012 Received in revised form 4 August 2012 Accepted 4 October 2012 Available online 2 November 2012

This research investigates how offering experiential values by an online retailer affects the personality of the e-retailer’s website in consumers’ minds. It empirically studies the impacts of four experiential value types – aesthetics, playfulness, customer return on investment (CROI), and service excellence – on each of the five website personality dimensions of enthusiasm, genuineness, solidity, sophistication, and pleasantness. The findings confirm the overall model and the majority of the hypothesized relationships are significant. The findings show that e-retailers should use appropriate combinations of experiential values to portray their desired website personalities. & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Online retailer Experiential values Website personality

1. Introduction The increasing level of competition motivated many firms to look for new sources of differentiation. In the last decade, Internet has been considered as a tool to increase business performance and improve customers’ perceived value (Levenburg, 2005). As traditional benefits such as price cuts and customized offers are becoming less effective in building strong customer-brand relationships (Noble and Phillips, 2004), many firms started a new positioning based on customer experience. In this new paradigm, firms constantly try to add experiential benefits to their traditional offerings and mainly promise to provide pleasurable, unique, and memorable customer experiences rather than superior product/service attributes (Li et al., 2001; Mathwick et al., 2001; Pine and Gilmore, 1998, 1999; Schmitt, 1999). Past research shows that offering experiential benefits results in several positive customer outcomes such as improvement in customer satisfaction (Brakus et al., 2009; Oh et al., 2007), customer emotions (Oh et al., 2007; Tsaur et al., 2006), and communal norms (Mathwick, 2002). Experiential benefits also lead to a number of positive outcomes including improvement in brand attitudes (Chang and Chieng., 2006; Zhang, 2008), perceived overall quality of the product/service (Oh et al., 2007),

n

Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 514 848 2424x2942; fax: þ 1 514 848 4576. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Shobeiri), [email protected] (M. Laroche), [email protected] (E. Mazaheri). 1 Tel.: þ1 819 821 8000x65903; fax: þ 1 819 821 7934. 2 Tel.: þ1 705 728 1968x1079; fax: þ1 705 722 5105. 0969-6989/$ - see front matter & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2012.10.011

consumer–brand relationships (Chang and Chieng., 2006), memory for the brand (Oh et al., 2007), brand personality (Brakus et al., 2009; Chang and Chieng., 2006), and customer loyalty/behavioral intentions (Brakus et al., 2009; Keng et al., 2007). A review of these studies reveals that most investigated outcomes of experiential values in industries that mainly operate through traditional brick-and-mortar settings such as hotels and lodging (Oh et al., 2007; Zhang, 2008), shopping malls (Keng et al., 2007), zoos (Tsaur et al. 2006), coffee shops (Chang and Chieng., 2006), and tourism (Hayes and MacLeod, 2007; Ritchie and Hudson, 2009; Wang, 2008; Wang and Lin, 2010; Williams, 2006). On the other hand, only a few studies focus on provision of experiential values through new interactive technologies. In particular, there is a huge potential for investigating the impacts of experiential marketing in the digital context, which is a highly suitable platform for staging memorable experiences (Pine and Gilmore, 1999). Our study aims to investigate how experiential marketing helps the fast growing sector of online retailing to enhance its brand image. Previous studies consistently suggested that ‘‘customer experience’’ influences ‘‘brand/store personality.’’ In these studies, experiential marketing and personality were measured as unidimensional variables. Following a comprehensive review of the literature on retail branding, Ailawadi and Keller (2004) suggested that an important topic for future research would be to identify which retailer’s attributes influence which dimensions of the retailer’s brand personality. Trying to shed some light on this topic, this study is an exploratory research to look at the influences of each of the four experiential values of Mathwick

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et al. (2001) on different dimensions of the e-retailer’s website personality (Poddar et al., 2009). This work also departs from the majority of past studies that treat brand personality as a unidimensional construct and instead follows the recommendation of several researchers (Aaker, 1997; Maehle and Supphellen, 2011) to focus on distinct personality dimensions and their antecedents. Accordingly, our study could also serve as a validity test for the newly developed construct of website personality, as conceptualized by Poddar et al. (2009). This article is organized as follows. First, an overview of the concepts of experiential marketing and brand/store/website personality is provided. Next, the research model and hypotheses are introduced and discussed. Then, we elaborate on the methodology, data collection and measurement decisions. Finally, the findings as well as the implications and avenues for future research are discussed.

2. Theoretical background

Fig. 1. Typology of experiential values. (Source: Mathwick, Malhotra, and Rigdon, 2001, p. 42).

2.1. Experiential marketing Early studies introduced two main approaches to consumption: first, the information-processing view considers customers as rational and goal-oriented individuals; second the experiential perspective emphasizes the pleasure orientation of customers and states that they continuously seek fantasies, feelings, and fun (Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982; Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982). Similarly, Keller (1993) stated that one of the main benefits a brand could offer is to satisfy consumers’ experiential needs such as desire for ‘‘sensory pleasure, variety, and cognitive stimulation’’ (p. 4). Pine and Gilmore (1998, 1999) believe that such high popularity of experiential benefits among customers created a new ‘‘experience economy’’ that follows economies of commodities, goods, and services. In this new paradigm, a firm’s main task becomes to constantly stage unique and memorable experiences. A shift from traditional marketing that focuses on features-and-benefits to experiential marketing that considers both rational and sensory-emotive consumption motivations is also mentioned by Schmitt (1999). Holbrook (1994) categorized experiential values using the two dimensions of intrinsic vs. extrinsic and active vs. reactive. Extrinsic values refer to utilitarian and task-completion aspects of shopping. Intrinsic values reflect the fun side of shopping that includes enjoying a shopping activity for its own sake regardless of its outcomes. On the other dimension, customers receive reactive value when they comprehend, appreciate, or respond to an experience. Active value is created when customers collaborate with the providing company and participate in the experience. Combining these two dimensions results into four types of experiential values including consumer return on investment (CROI), service excellence, aesthetics, and playfulness as labeled by Mathwick et al. (2001) (see Fig. 1). According to Mathwick et al. (2001), customer return on investment (CROI) refers to all returns that a customer obtains from investing his financial, temporal, behavioral and psychological resources in the shopping process. This experiential value type includes economic and efficiency utilities, which reflect affordable quality and efficiency of the exchange encounter respectively. Service excellence refers to the degree to which a firm performs ideally and serves as a standard for quality judgments. According to Mathwick et al. (2001), perceptions of service excellence are based on the level to which customers believe a company delivers its promises and expertly performs its tasks. Mathwick et al. (2001) further believe that aesthetics has two key dimensions including the visual aspects of the retail environment, and entertaining or the dramatic elements that help in lifting the spirits of the shoppers.

These authors mention that aesthetics in e-retailing could be created through appropriate design and combination of colors, graphics, layout, and photographs. Finally, playfulness includes two elements of escapism and enjoyment. According to Mathwick et al. (2001), it originates from absorbing activities that create intrinsic enjoyment as well as feelings of escapism and temporary getaway from everyday routines.

2.2. Brand, store and website personality Brand personality serves as an important dimension of brand associations in consumers’ minds (Keller, 1993). Aaker (1997), p. 347 defined brand personality as ‘‘the set of human characteristics associated with a brand.’’ Past research confirms that customers tend to associate human characteristics to products, and the types and strengths of these associations significantly impact success or failure of the brands in the marketplace. According to ‘‘self-congruity’’ theory, customers show higher attitudes and preference for a brand if they believe it could be described by human characteristics that are similar to their actual or ideal selves (Sirgy et al., 2000). It was also shown that customers develop different types of relationships with various brands based on how they perceive the personalities of these brands (Chang and Chieng., 2006; Fournier, 1998; Sweeney and Brandon, 2006). Accordingly, Aaker (1996) refers to brand personality as one of the ten aspects of brand equity and an important element for creating brand differentiation. Such role of brand personality would be more important for brands that are very similar or brands that are socially consumed (Aaker, 1996; Kumar et al., 2006). According to Plummer (2000), brand personality is an important element in understanding brand choice, especially across cultures. In line with this notion, past research confirms the influence of brand personality on several important customer and business outcomes including perceived quality (Poddar et al., 2009; Ramaseshan and Tsao, 2007), attitude toward the brand (ChanOlmsted and Cha, 2008; Freling and Forbes, 2005; Grohmann, 2009; Mengxia, 2007; Wysong et al., 2002), affect (Grohmann, 2009; Sung et al., 2010), trust (Grohmann, 2009; Lee and Back, 2010; Louis and Lombart, 2010; Sung et al., 2010), customer satisfaction (Brakus et al., 2009; Lin, 2009), customer-brand relationships (Aaker et al., 2004; Chang and Chieng., 2006; Fournier, 1998), purchase intentions (Freling and Forbes, 2005; Grohmann, 2009; Mengxia, 2007; Wang et al., 2009), brand/company preference (Freling and Forbes 2005; Grohmann, 2009; Mengxia, 2007), brand Loyalty (Brakus et al., 2009; Chan-Olmsted and Cha, 2008; Kumar et al., 2006; Mengxia,

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2007), success of brand extensions (Freling and Forbes, 2005; Lau and Phau, 2007), and word of mouth communications (Grohmann, 2009). Aaker (1997) used the human personality model as a base to develop a scale for brand personality, and introduced the five dimensions of sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness. D’astous and Levesque (2003) later introduced the concept of store personality as ‘‘the mental representation of a store on dimensions that typically capture an individual’s personality’’ (p. 457). They developed a scale to measure store personality in the context of department stores. In contrast to the brand personality scale of Aaker (1997), the store personality scale had four positive dimensions including enthusiasm (dynamic, enthusiastic, lively, welcoming), sophistication (chic, elegant, high class, stylish), genuineness (honest, reliable, sincere, true), and solidity (hardy, reputable, solid, thriving), as well as one negative dimension of unpleasantness (annoying, irritating, loud, and superficial). This scale was later applied by Poddar et al. (2009) to the online domain and formed the basis of the website personality scale. In that framework, the website personality is ‘‘the mental representation of a website store on dimensions that are similar to and reflect the dimensions of human personality’’ (Poddar et al., 2009, p. 442). In fact, Poddar et al. (2009) believe there are many similarities between an e-seller’s website and a physical store, as both facilitate interaction with the customers, provide recommendations, offer help by sales representatives, etc. Therefore, they used the same dimensions of store personality mentioned by D’astous and Levesque’s (2003) to measure the personalities of the e-commerce websites. According to Poddar et al. (2009), an enthusiastic website is one that effectively uses its structure and design to create a lively, friendly and welcoming atmosphere for the visitors. Solidity of a website, on the other hand, refers to the degree to which it performs its business in a professional manner (e.g., good selection range, easy purchase process). Poddar et al. (2009) also refer to reliability and security of a website as keys to create a genuine personality for it, and describe a sophisticated website as elegant, classy, and upscale. Finally, a pleasant website is described as one that is free from annoying layout or irritating purchase processes. The impacts of variables such as website atmospheric cues, website design, website usability, and privacy and security on consumer behavior variables such as trust, satisfaction, purchase intention, and loyalty have been well established in the literature (Belanche et al., 2012; Eroglu et al., 2001; Hausman and Siekpe, 2009; Kim et al., 2009; Mazaheri et al., 2011; Richard, 2005).

2.3. Impacts of experiential values on customer perception of website personality Basically, the antecedents of customers’ perception of brand personality could be categorized into product-related factors such as packaging and price, and non-product-related factors such as user imagery, sponsorships, and country of origin (Aaker, 1997). Our study introduces experiential values offered by an e-retailer as a potential product-related factor that could contribute to the improvement of the e-retailer’s website personality. A few studies revealed the roles of various elements of a website in shaping its personality. For instance, Park et al. (2005) showed that websites could use different combinations of visual attributes – including simplicity, cohesion, contrast, density, and regularity – in order to portray various e-brand personalities. Similarly, Poddar et al. (2009) believe that elements such as overall layout, structure, and color scheme could help in forming an enthusiastic or sophisticated personality for a website. They

also believe that websites could create a genuine personality by using items such as secure marks or money-back guarantees in their interfaces. A solid personality, on the other hand, originates from ease of purchasing on the website or depth of selection that it offers its customers. Finally, Poddar et al. (2009) point to the website’s theme and layout as well as the efficiency of the online purchasing process as factors that impact perceptions of the site’s pleasantness. Poddar et al. (2009) found there is a positive link between a website’s customer orientation and several dimensions of its personality including enthusiasm, genuineness, sophistication, and pleasantness. Experiential values were shown to improve retail preference and future patronage intentions of online customers (Fiore et al., 2005; Mathwick et al., 2001; Soltani and Gharbi, 2008) as well as attitude toward revisiting the site (Keng and Ting, 2009) and attitude toward the e-retailer (Fiore et al., 2005). Experiential benefits also explain how individuals belong and contribute to social network websites (Palmer and Koenig-Lewis, 2009) as well as how visitors concentrate and pay attention to web pages in general (Lin et al., 2008). Due to the newness of the experiential marketing field, no prior research investigated the relationships between experiential values and the dimensions of website personality. However, there are similarities between the antecedents of website personality and the experiential values of Mathwick et al. (2001). For instance, the aesthetics dimension of experiential values includes elements such as visual attributes or color schemes, while the efficiency of the purchasing process is reflected in the CROI value type. On the other hand, the playfulness dimension of experiential values encompasses enjoyment caused by its theme and layout while the guarantees and customer orientation of the website could create impressions of service excellence. Furthermore, past research confirms that practicing experiential marketing affects the personality of a brand in general. For instance, Chang and Chieng. (2006) found that the experiential modules of Schmitt (1999) including individual experiences (sense, feel, think) and shared experiences (act and relate) positively influence personalities of coffee shop brands. In another study, Brakus et al. (2009) showed that four dimensions of brand experience – including sensory, affective, intellectual, and behavioral – have positive impacts on the personalities of several product brands. Accordingly and in line with previous studies that showed that experiential features of the website contribute to enhancing brand equity of the dot-com company (e.g., Na and Marshall, 2005; Page and LepkowskaWhite, 2002), the following hypotheses are developed: H1: Perceived (a) customer return on investment (CROI), (b) service excellence, (c) aesthetics, and (d) playfulness positively impact customer perceptions of the enthusiasm dimension of the e-retailer’s website personality. H2: Perceived (a) customer return on investment (CROI), (b) service excellence, (c) aesthetics, and (d) playfulness positively impact customer perceptions of the genuineness dimension of the e-retailer’s website personality. H3: Perceived (a) customer return on investment (CROI), (b) service excellence, (c) aesthetics, and (d) playfulness positively impact customer perceptions of the solidity dimension of the e-retailer’s website personality. H4: Perceived (a) customer return on investment (CROI), (b) service excellence, (c) aesthetics, and (d) playfulness positively impact customer perceptions of the sophistication dimension of the e-retailer’s website personality. H5: Perceived (a) customer return on investment (CROI), (b) service excellence, (c) aesthetics, and (d) playfulness positively impact customer perceptions of the pleasantness dimension of the e-retailer’s website personality.

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Table 1 Results of the CFA and reliability tests. Latent factors

Factor loadings

Cronbach’s

a

Experiential values Aesthetics The way XYZ displays its products is attractive. XYZ’s internet site is aesthetically appealing. I like the way XYZ’s internet site looks. I think XYZ’s internet site is very entertaining. The enthusiasm of XYZ’s internet site is catching, it picks me up. Playfulness Shopping from XYZ’s internet site ‘‘gets me away from it all’’. Shopping from XYZ makes me feel like I am in another world. I get so involved when I shop from XYZ that I forget everything. I enjoy shopping from XYZ’s Internet site for its own sake, not just for the items I may have purchased. I shop from XYZ’s Internet site for the pure enjoyment of it. Customers return on investment (CROI) Shopping from XYZ is an efficient way to manage my time. Shopping from XYZ’s internet site makes my life easier. Shopping from XYZ’s internet site fits with my schedule. Service excellence When I think of XYZ, I think of excellence. I think of XYZ as an expert in the merchandise it offers. Enthusiasm Welcoming Enthusiastic Lively Dynamic Congenial Genuineness Honest Sincere Reliable True Trustful Genuine Solidity Hardy Solid Thriving Sophistication Chic High class Elegant Stylish With a snobbish feel Pleasantness Not annoying Not irritating Not loud Not superficial

.89 .787 .894 .885 .666 .694 .84 .746 .663 .760 .722 .717 .83 .724

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among the most active online shoppers and Web users (Lester et al., 2005; Yoo and Donthu, 2001). In addition, the high homogeneity of the student sample helps in the theory-testing purpose of this study (Goldsmith, 2002; Malhotra and King, 2003). Selfadministered questionnaires along with consent forms were distributed at the beginning of classes or during a break. In exchange for their participation, subjects were entered into a draw for one of 10 $20 gift cards. Participants were instructed to think about the eretailer from which they had most recently made a purchase and answer the questions with that e-store in mind. Such method allows looking at the actual online shopping experiences of the participants. To better help respondents recall that purchase experience, the name of the e-store and the date of the purchase were asked at the beginning of the questionnaire. In total, we had 985 participants. The questionnaires that were incomplete or belonged to individuals who had made no online purchase in the last six months were eliminated, resulting in 893 usable responses. Fifty two percent of the participants were male and the median age group was 20 to 24 years. Respondents’ online purchases included the following: (1) books/publications (17%), (2) computers and electronics (11%), (3) music, movies and games (4%), (4) apparel (18%), (5) auctions/mega-store products (23%), (6) travel (11%), and (7) others (16%).

.894

3.2. Measures

.734 .77 .860 .738 .89 .722 .832 .871 .797 .711 .89 .813 .768 .730 .791 .801 .712 .74 .787 .836 .513

To test the model, we used two existing scales from the literature. Experiential values were measured by the Experiential Value Scale (EVS) developed by Mathwick et al. (2001) in the context of internet and catalog shopping. This scale intended to measure four experiential value types including customer return on investment (CROI), service excellence, aesthetics, and playfulness. Seven-point Likert scales were used to indicate the respondents’ levels of agreement/disagreement with each statement. The personality of the online retailer’s website was measured by the 11-item Website personality scale of Poddar et al. (2009). This scale is based on the framework of D’astous and Levesque (2003) for store personality and includes the dimensions of enthusiasm, sophistication, genuineness, solidity, and unpleasantness. For our purpose, the negative dimension of unpleasantness was re-coded to represent pleasantness. Items were measured by seven-point Likert scales with anchors of ‘‘not at all descriptive of this website’’ and ‘‘completely descriptive of this website.’’

.91 .826 .896 .914 .810 .604

4. Results 4.1. Test of reliability and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) .84

.899 .940 .605 .526

3. Methodology 3.1. Sample and data collection Data collection took place through a paper and pencil survey. A survey is an appropriate research method when the study deals with many variables (Churchill, 1995) and aims to gather descriptive information (Kotler et al., 2007). The sample mostly consisted of undergraduate and graduate students participating on a voluntary basis. Subjects were recruited through an announcement in several classes at a large North Eastern university. Student subjects are

Before testing the full model, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was run. Results of the EFA demonstrated that five itemsincluding one item of aesthetics, one item of solidity, and three items of CROI-had either low primary loading ( o60) or high cross-loading ( 435). Eliminating the item of aesthetics and one of the problematic items of CROI also led to improvements in the alphas of aesthetics and CROI from 0.88 to 0.89 and from 0.69 to 0.84, respectively. Using EQS 6.1, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was run by specifying the factor model including all 9 variables. Results showed that the factor loading of one solidity item was .442. Thus, this item was next eliminated and another CFA was run. This time, all the remaining items had acceptable factor loadings. Results of the CFA demonstrated goodness of fit for the measurement model: Chi-square, NNFI, CFI, and RMSEA had values of 2063 (df¼629),.954,.959, and.052, respectively. Table 1 shows the factor loadings of all the remaining items and the Cronbach’s alphas of the constructs. Model fit parameters

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Table 2 Tests for convergent and discriminant validity.

Aesthetics Playfulness CROI Service excellence Enthusiasm Genuineness Solidity Sophistication Pleasantness

AVE

Aesthetics

Playfulness

CROI

Service excellence

Enthusiasm

Genuineness

Solidity

Sophistication

Pleasantness

.63 .52 .62 .64 .62 .59 .53 .67 .58

.79 .32 .12 .49 .69 .34 .37 .50 .27

.72 .14 .31 .40 .08 .21 .34 -.04

.79 .35 .10 .27 .19 .05 .06

.80 .45 .60 .42 .47 .25

.79 .41 .48 .52 .16

.77 .63 .29 .38

.73 .35 .14

.82 .02

.76

Note: Square roots of the AVEs are on diagonal (bold) and correlations among factors are off-diagonal.

were all in the acceptable range, considering the number of items and factors in the analysis (Baumgartner and Homburg, 1996). Table 1 also demonstrates that the Cronbach’s alphas of all the constructs were higher than the cut-off of 0.6 proposed by Churchill (1979). To test for convergent validity, the average variance explained (AVE) by each factor was calculated (second column in Table 2). All factors had AVEs higher than .50, showing that each construct shared higher variance with its own indicators than with error variances (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). To check for discriminant validity, correlations between the factors and the square roots of the AVEs were compared (Table 2). Since the square root of the AVE for each factor was higher than the correlations between that factor and all the other factors, discriminant validity is supported (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). 4.2. Tests of hypotheses To test the model, EQS 6.1 was used. The model’s goodness of fit indicators were all in the acceptable range: Chi-square, NNFI, CFI, and RMSEA had values of 2280 (df ¼639), .948, .953 and .055, respectively. The results provided strong support for the overall model and confirmed the majority of the structural paths (Table 3). According to the findings, service excellence was the only experiential value positively impacting all five dimensions of the e-retailer’s website personality. Aesthetics positively influenced enthusiasm, sophistication, and pleasantness. The influences of aesthetics on genuineness and solidity, however, were not significant. Playfulness had positive impacts on enthusiasm and sophistication, non-significant impact on solidity, and negative impacts on genuineness and pleasantness of the e-retailer’s website. Finally, CROI negatively affected enthusiasm and sophistication of the website personality; while its impacts on genuineness, solidity, and pleasantness were not significant. The supported hypotheses were thus H1b, H1c, H1d, H2b, H3b, H4b, H4c, H4d, H5b, and H5c. The results of the structural model are shown in Fig. 2.

5. Discussion Past studies showed that offering experiential values on the website improves the brand equity of online retailers in terms of enhancing customer preference and loyalty. Our study builds on this stream of research by investigating the impacts of experiential values on another dimension of the e-retailer’s brand equity, i.e., e-retailer’s website personality. For the first time, our research studied how each dimension of the e-retailer’s website personality is affected by the four experiential values of Mathwick et al. (2001).

Table 3 Structural paths: experiential values and website personality dimensions. Hypothesis

Hypothetical path a

CROI -Enthusiasm Service excellence-Enthusiasm Aesthetics-Enthusiasm Playfulness-Enthusiasm CROI-Genuineness Service excellence-Genuineness Aesthetics-Genuineness Playfulness-Genuineness CROI-Solidity Service excellence-Solidity Aesthetics-Solidity Playfulness-Solidity CROI-Sophistication Service excellence-Sophistication Aesthetics-Sophistication Playfulness-Sophistication CROI-Pleasantness Service excellence-Pleasantness Aesthetics-Pleasantness Playfulness-Pleasantness

H1a H1b H1c H1d H2a H2b H2c H2d H3a H3b H3c H3d H4a H4b H4c H4d H5a H5b H5c H5d

Beta coefficient  .114** .315*** .478*** .154***  .050n.s. .875***  .091n.s.  .206***  .090n.s. .690***  .007n.s.  .026n.s.  .153*** .362*** .267*** .157***  .051n.s. .317*** .152**  .214***

Notes: *significant at p o .05 a

Customer return on investment. n.s.¼not significant significant at p o .01, significant at p o .001,

nn

nnn

Results of the Structural Model: Experiential Values and Website Personality Dimensions Aesthetics

Enthusiasm

Genuineness Playfulness Solidity CROI Sophistication

Service Excellence

Pleasantness

Note: Positive significant Negative significant Fig. 2. Results of the structural model: experiential values and website personality dimensions.

S. Shobeiri et al. / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 20 (2013) 102–110

Our findings show that there are differences among experiential values in terms of their roles in shaping the website personality of an e-retailer. Among the four experiential values of Mathwick et al. (2001), service excellence was the only one to positively impact all five website personality dimensions. Furthermore, some personality traits including solidity and genuineness were found to be improved only through service excellence. Therefore, service excellence could be referred to as the most effective experiential value in enhancing the e-retailer’s website image. This finding is consistent with previous studies that reported ‘‘customer service’’ as a key factor driving customer satisfaction and purchase intention in online context (Endo et al., 2012). The second most influential experiential value was aesthetics since it positively impacts three out of the five website personality dimensions including enthusiasm, sophistication, and playfulness. Our research, however, did not find a relationship between visual appeal and entertainment of an e-retailer’s website and the level to which customers find it trustworthy, honest, and reliable. Contrary to some studies (Harris and Goode, 2008), our research did not find a significant relationship between aesthetics offered by an e-retailer’s website and the level to which the site looks trustworthy, honest, and reliable. Consistent with our finding, a few studies confirmed the non-existent impacts of the design and ambience factors of a store/an e-store on customer’s trust (Brengman and Willems, 2009; Zhou et al., 2009). In fact, trust development generally takes time and customers do not always form perceptions of genuineness about a store/an e-store based on the immediate pleasure originating from its aesthetic appeals. Another explanation is that visual appeal and entertainment features become less effective in forming perceptions of the website’s genuineness as shopping experiences of the customers increase. Confirming this notion, Jin and Park (2006) showed that the website design has a bigger impact on trust for visitors with low experience than for those with high-experience. Playfulness was found to be the only experiential value that had mixed (both positive and negative) impacts on different dimensions of the e-retailer’s website personality. While playfulness had positive impacts on enthusiasm and sophistication, it had negative influences on genuineness and pleasantness and non-significant influence on solidity. Perhaps the extensive use of playfulness diminishes the efficiency of shopping from the site and creates perceptions that it lacks solidity, seriousness and reliability. This situation is especially probable when customers mainly look for a highly efficient online transaction – due to time constraints – and pay little attention to the escapism/enjoyment aspects of the site. A website that is rich on playfulness features might be perceived by this group of clients as annoying, superficial and unpleasant. In line with this notion, Oh et al. 2007 found that the escapism dimension of experiential values has no significant effect on the perceived overall quality of Bed and Breakfasts, where customers mainly care for efficiency and are happy with standard offerings. Furthermore, Overby and Lee (2006) showed that as online consumers gain more shopping experience, they become more task-oriented. Many of our participants referred to websites that they visit and purchase from frequently, such as ebay.com, or amazon.com. Due to their high level of interaction with those e-retailers, respondents might have become highly task-oriented and thus they find play features of the site unnecessary and unpleasant. Finally, it was interesting to find that CROI did not enhance any of the e-retailer’s website personality dimensions. Although not consistent with our hypotheses, this finding is understandable since competition based on efficiency and affordability is very common today among e-retailers. As Pine and Gilmore (1999) predicted, e-retailing has led to the commoditization of products and services and a competition mainly based on price reduction. Due to such common tendency of the industry, customers might

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not find CROI a real and distinguishing indicator of any website’s specific personality traits. In other words, the industry’s common focus on efficiency and affordability makes CROI fall short on being a distinguishing element of an e-retailer’s website personality. Due to the vast provision of CROI by many e-retailers today, this factor might not be sufficient to make customers really involved and interested in the website. Furthermore, perhaps eretailers that emphasized efficiency were not perceived by the respondents as creators of extras such as joy and interest. In fact, holding interests of the website visitors requires evoking some degrees of joy, which might not be present when the stimulus is perceived as ordinary and common. This notion is in line with the findings of Keng and Ting (2009) who showed that CROI – in contrast to the other three experiential values of Mathwick et al. (2001) – was not positively correlated to the user’s attitude toward visiting a blog. Furthermore, Richard and Chandra (2005) showed that when consumers surf the Web, the challenge that they experience is positively related to their site involvement. As stated previously, maximizing CROI refers to receiving maximum benefits from investing minimum amounts of various resources such as time and energy. High CROI, therefore, might be an indicator of the low level of challenge encountered by individuals during their Web surfing sessions and thus might not contribute to increasing their interest and involvement in the site. In this research, CROI had non-significant impacts on the genuineness, solidity, and pleasantness dimensions while it had negative effects on enthusiasm and sophistication. The observed limited role of CROI in improving website personality could also be due to the fact that many economic and efficient sites have a basic and standard design. Therefore, customers might not necessarily perceive these sites as dynamic, lively, or thriving. In other words, such e-retailers might have chosen to sacrifice offering a unique and distinct website personality for the sake of providing efficiency, simplicity, and ease of use. In sum, this research showed that each dimension of the e-retailer’s website personality could be improved by providing certain experiential values on the site. Genuineness encompasses issues of trust and reliability. This study confirmed the major role of service excellence in the enhancement of this website personality dimension. This finding is consistent with previous works that showed that customers form trust in an e-store based on its service quality (Harris and Goode, 2004), order fulfillment and absence of errors (Bart et al., 2005), and performance on the core offering (Cho, 2006). Solidity refers to the capability of a website in professionally conducting its business (Poddar et al., 2009). We found that service excellence positively contributes to this dimension as well. This finding was predictable since service excellence encompasses expertise and excellence factors, which have clear performance connotations. This study further showed that a website could portray a more sophisticated and enthusiastic personality by providing aesthetics, playfulness, and service excellence. This finding is consistent with Poddar et al. (2009), who pointed to color, scheme, layout, and structure as factors that enhance enthusiasm and sophistication of the websites. Finally, we found that e-retailers could decrease unpleasantness of their sites through investing on aesthetics and service excellence values. This finding is also consistent with Poddar et al. (2009) who attributed site unpleasantness to its inappropriate layout or inefficient purchasing process. Finally it was interesting to find that among the four experiential values, reactive value types – including aesthetics and service excellence – had higher contributions to the improvement of the website personality. In this study, service excellence enhanced all of the five website personality dimensions and aesthetics improved three of them. In other words, our research suggests that e-retailers could strengthen their images mostly by

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providing reactive values of appreciation and comprehension (Holbrook, 1994; Mathwick et al., 2001). This findings, however, is not consistent with past studies that call for value-creation through involvement and co-creation experiences of customers (Cauberghe and De Pelsmacker, 2010; Holland and Baker, 2001; Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). Future research could further investigate this issue and elaborate on the effectiveness boundaries of co-creation principles. This study has several theoretical and managerial contributions. According to Berry (2000), the only method to stand out in highly competitive environments is to create a favorable and unique brand personality. This factor becomes particularly important when the offerings of many companies are very similar in terms of price or quality (Kumar et al., 2006), such as in online retailing (Pine and Gilmore, 1999). A theoretical contribution to knowledge is that this research is the first to investigate the impacts of experiential values on the five dimensions of an e-retailer’s website personality. It also makes important contributions to the literature on brand personality, since previous research mostly focused on effects of brand personality or measurement issues and few investigated how personality is formed (Maehle and Supphellen, 2011). Furthermore, this study could serve as a validity test for the newly developed construct of website personality suggested by Poddar et al. (2009). The findings of this research show managers how to enhance the personality of an e-retailer’s website in consumers’ minds. In contrast with the majority of prior studies that treat brand personality as a unidimensional construct, this research revealed what it takes to improve each of the five distinct personality dimensions. Therefore, this study would serve as an effective positioning guideline for managers by helping them realize how offering various combinations of experiential values would help in creating different images for the e-retailer brands. We suggest that designers of e-retailing websites first decide strategically about the type of personality that they would like the site to portray. That desired image could be described in terms of the five website personality dimensions of enthusiasm, genuineness, solidity, sophistication, and pleasantness. The next step would be to create this personality by selecting appropriate ingredients from the four experiential values of aesthetics, playfulness, CROI, and service excellence. It was interesting to see that the four experiential values had completely different roles in the formation of the website personality: while the impacts of certain values (aesthetics and service excellence) were absolutely positive, certain other values (CROI) had only negative impacts and some others (playfulness) had a mixed influence on the personality dimensions. One strategic implication of this finding is that managers should decide on including or excluding each of the four experiential values independent from the other values. As mentioned before, previous studies point to a shift from traditional marketing (information-processing consumption) to experiential marketing. The results of our study show that both information-processing and experiential perspectives – although to a different extent – are still applicable in the context of online retailing. We found that both intrinsic and extrinsic value types could improve the perceptions of the website personality or detract from it. In other words, neither intrinsic nor extrinsic type of value was found to have an absolute superiority over the other in terms of improving the website personality. Our findings, therefore, reveal that a ‘‘shift’’ from rational consumption to sensory-emotive consumption has not yet fully happened in the context of e-retailing. This finding is also in line with a number of recent studies that showed both hedonic and utilitarian values are still positively related to customer preference (Overby and Lee, 2006), customer satisfaction (Carpenter and Fairhurst, 2005; Cottet et al. 2006), and loyalty/behavioral intentions (Tsai, 2005;

Pura, 2005). It would be interesting to conduct a longitudinal study based on our model to see how the customers’ desire for information-processing consumption vs. experiential consumption would change over time.

6. Limitations and directions for future research This study has limitations that should be taken into consideration before applying its results. First, it used the survey method for data collection and asked respondents to think of their most recent online shopping experiences. Using an experiment instead of a survey might help overcome the problem of respondents’ not being able to retrieve a clear picture of their last online shopping experience. Furthermore, many of the websites mentioned by respondents were well known e-retailers. The experimental method could also control for the e-retailer from which respondents make purchases and thus reduce the probability that nonproduct related factors such as user imagery, or country of origin (Aaker, 1997) could become more important than experiential values in shaping the site’s image. Another shortcoming might be related to the student sample. The importance of some experiential value types for shoppers might vary between this group and the general population, considering the fact that students are usually very comfortable with surfing the internet and exploring e-retailers’ websites. Furthermore, we did not find a positive significant effect of CROI on the website personality dimensions. Future research needs to be conducted to shed more light on this important finding. According to Mathwick et al. (2001), there is a possible moderation of variables such as characteristics of the product or the profile of the target market on the impacts of experiential values. Therefore, an extension of our study might be to investigate whether the relative importance of the four experiential values varies in different situations, such as purchasing routine items vs. shopping for specialty products. Future research could also investigate whether the impacts of experiential values on the e-retailer’s website personality are the same or variable when one moves from one culture to another. For instance, one could study whether intrinsic values (playfulness and aesthetics) and extrinsic values (service excellence and CROI) would work differently across cultures with different levels of appreciation for an individual’s participation and active involvement. In this study, we measured service excellence with two dimensions, due to lack of reliability of other items. Future research may confirm the result by using other scales of service excellence. Finally, the Experiential Value Scale of Mathwick et al. (2001) includes Holbrook’s (1994) ‘‘self-oriented’’ values only. In addition to those values, Holbrook (1994) also mentioned four ‘‘other-oriented’’ value dimensions including status, ethics, esteem, and spirituality. Future research could extend the current work by looking at the impacts of these ‘‘other-oriented’’ values as well, particularly in a cross-cultural context.

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