The Effects of the Attractiveness of an Internet Shopping Mall and Flow on Affective Commitment

Abstract

With the many advantages of the internet, online shopping has become one of the fastest growing types of retail businesses. However, internet-based firms are much more firmly required to retain existing customers rather than secure new ones, and to make them revisit the site by strengthening trust and loyalty, thereby improving profits and outrivaling competitors. Commitment is an essential part of successful long-term relationships between buyers and sellers. Although commitments by both parties in an exchange can provide the foundation for the development of relational social norms, disproportionate commitments can lead to opportunism by the less committed partner. Moreover, flow, which is characterized by intense concentration and enjoyment, was found to be significantly linked with exploratory use behavior, which in turn was linked to the extent of computer use. The level of flow was, itself, determined by the individual's sense of being in control, and the level of challenge perceived in maneuvering a website. Website attractiveness goes hand in hand with the attractiveness of an internet shopping mall, and it can be conceptualized as the persuasive effectiveness of a message by the use of familiarity, favor, similarity, etc. It occurs when information receivers try to achieve self-satisfaction when they actually or emotionally identify themselves with an information source. This study investigates the relationship between the perceived system characteristics of an internet shopping mall and the loyalty of online consumers, and it examines how perceived website attractiveness and flow play mediating roles between the perceived system characteristics of an internet shopping mall and the affective commitment in the context of a clothes internet shopping mall. For these purposes, a structural model comprising several variables was developed. That model was tested with an analysis of moment structure (AMOS) using data from respondents who had purchased clothing through the internet during the past three months. In this model, the perceived system characteristics of an internet shopping mall, such as familiarity, reputation, uniqueness, positive emotions, self-efficacy, and interactivity, were proposed to affect the website’s attractiveness and flow, and lead to a higher affective commitment over time. Thus, the perceived website attractiveness and flow were proposed as core mediating variables between perceived system characteristics and affective commitment. The results of a reliability test using Cronbach's Alpha, and a confirmatory factor analysis warranted using unidimensionality for the measures for each construct. In addition, the nomological validity of the measures was warranted from the results of a correlation analysis. The results of empirical analyses indicated that systematic attributes resulting in website attractiveness and user's characteristics, thereby triggering customers’ flow, play a crucial role in inducing customers’ affective commitment, and a user's characteristics are twice as important as systematic attributes in this study. Moreover, familiarity, reputation, and uniqueness all have a significant effect on website attractiveness, and the research showed that uniqueness took the first place, and that familiarity and reputation followed in order of magnitude. The fact that reputation was not the most important factor that affects the attractiveness of an internet shopping mall, with uniqueness or familiarity having a greater impact, suggests much deeper implications. Finally, positive emotion, self-efficacy, and interactivity all have a significant effect on customers’ flow. In particular, the fact that positive emotion, compared to self-efficacy or interactivity, has much more impact on flow is very suggestive.