Factor Structure of Content Preparation for E-Business Web Sites: A Survey Results of Industrial Employees in P.R. China Yinni Guo1 and Gavriel Salvendy2 1

School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, U.S.A [email protected] 2 School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue UniversityWest Lafayette, IN 47907, U.S.A And Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University Beijing, 100084, P.R. China [email protected]

Abstract. To enhance the quality of e-business web sites, a study of factor structure in content preparation is needed. Based on background literature, a content preparation survey of 70 items was developed and completed by 428 white collar employees of XOCECO Company in mainland China. The survey aimed at examining the significant content factors of e-business web sites. Results of the study indicated a 0.75 internal consistency of the questionnaire. A factor analysis of the data indicated fifteen main content factors for e-business web sites, which accounts for 60.1% percent of total variance. The factors in order of importance are: security content, quality content, service content, appearance description, contact information, aid function, customized function, search function, product specification, purchasing aid, price content, detailed description, comment content, matching product, review content. This study concludes with guidelines for the design of content preparation of e-business we presented. Keywords: Content Preparation; E-business; Factor Structure.

1 Introduction While many usability studies discuss how information should be presented on the web site, not much work has been done on what information should be included on the web site. According to previous studies (Proctor et al. 2002) [22] of content preparation, e-business web sites should provide well classified and high quality information. However, currently there is a gap between what customers want to see on web sites, and what web sites present. This gap leads us to find out the significant factors for e-business web site content. This study also aims at finding whether there are differences in preferences between different types of customers. J. Jacko (Ed.): Human-Computer Interaction, Part I, HCII 2007, LNCS 4550, pp. 784–795, 2007. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007

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2 Background Literature 2.1 Inadequacy of Usability Study Previously, HCI researchers focused more on usability study—“how the information should be presented to customers”. Their studies include how to improve the availability, accessibility, efficiency, the format of web sites and the underlying systems. However, only usability enhancement is not enough. A web site could be designed with high efficient structure based on usability theories, but still useless if it contains the wrong content. For example, if a well organized e-business web site provides us education information—it would still be a poor web site, because education information is not what we expect from it. Therefore, attention should be paid to not just “how”, but “what kind of information should be presented”. As Proctor et al. (2002) [22] pointed out, the way in which information is organized and displayed is vital for web sites that contain a large amount of data intended for accessing by a range of users, or even a targeted group of users. Some web sites, like the library categories or personal homepages, could make it straightforward, but more could not. A large amount of systems and web sites contain materials that can not be readily classified into well-established, distinct, and limited topics for search. For companies like e-business companies, which take full advantage of the potential offered by the web, it is essential for their web sites to be prepared and organized in a highly usable manner and with high quality information. However, this is often not the case. In the study of Kim, Kishore and Sanders (2005) [13], users of Business-to-Business systems reported a number of serious problems during transactions, which included difficulties of locating the required information, completing ongoing transactions, finding timely and accurate information, and finding adequate electronic service functions to complete online transactions. Similarly, by the finding of Nielsen et al. (2000) [20], because of low quality information, users cannot find the items they want 36% of the time. Therefore, more researches about web site information and web content need to be taken into consideration. 2.2 The Definition of Content Preparation The formal definition of content preparation was first raised by Proctor and other researchers in 2002 [22]. It includes what information need to be selected, how information should be stored and organized, how the information could be retrieved and how the information should be displayed. In this study, we focus on what information needs to be selected. The definition of content preparation is based on previous studies about information quality. Several studies (Katerattanakul & Siau, 1999; Liu & Arnett, 2000; Loiacono, 2000, Mckinney, 2002) [11, 16, 17, 18] point out that the information quality of e-business web site, which has an impact on the satisfaction with the online purchasing process, has been identified as an evaluation criterion and dimension of web site quality and usability. But content preparation is different in some aspects from information quality. Information quality studies include the content of information and presentation of information, while content preparation concerns only with what kind of information needs to be presented.

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2.3 Content Preparation for E-Business Web Sites WWW is a pull medium, which means that audiences have much more control over what they want to see than in traditional media (Pollach, 2005) [21]. They would leave and turn to other web sites if they feel the web site could not meet their expectation. Recent statistics data shows that, although up to 80 percent of the satisfied online consumers would shop again within two months and 90 percent would recommend the Internet retailer to others (Cheung, Lee, 2004) [3]. However, 87 percent of the dissatisfied customers would permanently leave their Internet merchants without any complaints (Cheung, Lee, 2004) [3]. Similarly, in Ginige’s (2002) [6] research, he found that 84% of systems did not meet business requirements, 53% of systems did not have the required functionality, 79% of projects were late, 63% of projects exceeded budget. Therefore, solutions of preventing e-commerce development should be studied. Content Preparation and Customer Satisfaction Consumers’ perception about Internet retailers is mainly built upon their interactions with the web sites. The gap between customers’ expectation and e-business web sites’ representation is the majority cause of e-commerce shortage. As Janda et al. (2002) [10] and Szymanski and Hise (2000) [28] suggested, information quality was a strong determinant of consumer satisfaction in Internet shopping. Similarly, in Namjae and Hyojae’s (2003) [19] work, they found significant relationship among customer needs for specific contents, information usefulness, and expected benefit from the contents. Customer satisfaction and web site content are also close related. Girard’s (2002) [7] work on consumers’ preference for shopping on the Internet indicated that the content of a web site would affect consumers’ shopping patterns. McKinney et al. (2002) [18] also specified web customer satisfaction as impacted by information quality and system quality. Similarly, Turban and Gehrke (2000) [29] urged that the quality of the web content determined whether potential customers would be attracted to or driven away from the web site. The issue of customer expectation and satisfaction includes not only attracting new customers, but also the challenge of customer retention. As Anderson and Srinivasan figured out in 2003 [1], satisfaction was one of the most important consumer reactions in Internet shopping, and its importance was reflected in customers’ loyalty. Even for a company’s long term plan, the development of customer satisfaction would improve the company’s market share and profitability (Reichheld and Schefter 2000) [25]. The Investigation of E-Business Content There have been a few studies about the content quality for web sites, especially e-business web sites. Kim, Kishore and Sanders in 2005 [13] concluded that, the content dimension consists of three quality constructs including information accuracy, information relevance, and information completeness. Similarly, Barnes and Vidgen (2001) [2] defined web site content quality as the ability to provide accurate, timely, and reliable information as well as the suitability of the information for the users’ purpose. As early as in 2000, Huizingh [9] developed a research framework for distinguishing between the content and design aspects. In 2002, Robbins and Stylianou [27] used a framework adapted from Huizingh’s [9] to present a conceptual model which differentiates web site content from design. The conceptual web site

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content/design model is used for studying the features of global corporate web sites, and to determine if the content and design features have become globally standardized or if differences exist as a result of national culture and industry. In the white paper (Proctor et al. 2002) [22], the skeleton of content preparation and the future study areas were discussed. The vast amount of information available through the internet has made it difficult to retrieve information relevant to a specific task. To help ensure that users’ interactions with a system are successful, preparation of content and its presentation to users must take into account to a) what information needs to be extracted, b) the way in which this information should be stored and organized, c) the methods for retrieving the information, and d) how the information should be displayed. Proctor et al. (2003) [23] looked further into the content preparation and management for e-commerce web sites. In this research, they first investigated into how to elicit the knowledge and information that needed to be contained in a particular web site or application. If the appropriate information is not identified, then the content-preparation process could not possibly succeed. Assuming that this information is identified, then the second area involved organizing and structuring the content for the web. The organization and structure of the information should reflect the context, content, and users. Numerous methods have been developed for assisting developers in determining the elements of information for specific tasks and how these elements should be combined. Not only must an appropriate information architecture be developed, but it must be paired with an effective search engine that allows users to easily retrieve the information they desire. The structure and organization of information have to be mapped to the interface display, and the information needs to be conveyed in a manner that promotes successful interactions with users. Many companies have begun to focus more on customer expectation and satisfaction. Like Amazon.com, at the beginning of 21st century, provides very high quality of service including reliability, dependability and trust in order to have customers buy more than books, music, and gain more repeat business. However, today the architecture of corporate web sites appears to have incorporated a number of common features. These include search capabilities and site maps that recognize the diversity policy statement, security information and location information (Robbins and Stylianou 2002 [27]). Traditional approaches for information quality and content preparation fall short in the context of e-business systems as they do not adequately encompass and address aspects that are unique to these systems. E-business systems, enabled by the Internet, Web, and hypermedia technologies, are highly dynamic and interactive in nature, utilize rich hypermedia mechanisms in user interfaces for information presentation, and provide a tremendous amount of control over temporal aspects of information delivery to end users. (Kim, Kishore and Sanders 2005 [13]) Factor Structure of E-Business Content Preparation Preparing and organizing the necessary information is central to the success of content preparation. In this paper, we call it the factor structure of content preparation. The factor structure includes the factors, which are the important categories in the content, and the structure, which includes the factors between two factors, among factors, and the order of factors. Web site designers may incorporate these findings into the design of e-commerce sites in the attempt to increase the shopping satisfaction of their users.

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Companies that are able to organize and structure information in a way that promotes efficient and effective retrieval will save time and money, promote customer satisfaction and continued business, and gain an advantage over their competitors. There have been some studies of factor structure. McKinney et al. (2002) [18] gave out their suggestion of the structure of information for e-commerce web sites. They recruited undergraduate and graduate students at a large metropolitan university who have internet experience more than two years to create instruments for measuring constructs of web information quality and system quality. From their research results, the web sites should be relevant, understandable, reliable, adequate, useful, and should cover a broad scope. Proctor et al. (2003) [23] also provide some general principles. The first one is to prevent users from getting lost. The information needs to be structured in a manner that is simple and intuitive. Users must be able to comfortably and confidently navigate through the web site. The second one is to communicate the structure of the site to the users. Techniques are needed to help communicate a site’s structure, for example, obvious major section navigation, obvious sub-section navigation, navigational breadcrumbs, site map help. The last one is to satisfy customers. The organization and structure of the information must satisfy the needs, objectives, and preferences of users. For example, links to related web sites or to a table comparing prices or descriptions of similar items can be added. However, the factors are still on a theoretical level. For e-business, we need more applied factors and classifications. Online surveys and some researches have provided the customer expected factors, and classification that they consider to be important. The results of an online survey of 488 individuals in the United States by Lightner (2003) [15] indicated some general important aspects of a web site. It shows that respondents are generally satisfied with their online shopping experiences, with security, information quality and information quantity ranking first in importance overall. Lightner [15] also suggested that the web environment is important for customers, which includes merchandize, navigation, easy to purchase and feedback. Product price is another important feature. According to the study of Hilsenrath (2002) [8], consumer satisfaction rises as price driven lower. Similarly, according to the report the TheStreet.com, online consumers are becoming more price conscious than ever. Because the importance of price, more and more price comparison web sites exist. Like www.dealsea.com, www.dealinstyle.com are for retail deal and price information. Transportation agency web sites, like www.priceline.com and www.expedia.com are very popular among customers. They offer a convenient way of comparing price. Several papers, Liao and Cheung 2002 [14], Lightner et al. 1996 [15] all indicated that since the commercialization of the Internet, the speed of access is of concern to users. Szymanski and Hise (2000) [28] found product information and site design critical in creating a satisfying customer experience. The most related research about necessary information for online shopping was published by Detlor, Sproule and Gupta in 2003 [5]. 14 information categories for search and browse tasks were found through open-end questions answered by 962 participants. Similar research like a television advertising research done by Resnik and Stern (1977) [26], a tourism web site information study done by Corfu, Laranja and Costa in 2003 [4], and a case study of culture web site content (Karagiogoudi, Karatzas, 2003) [11] also listed some important attributes in web site content design.

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2.4 Conceptual Model Based on the collection and comparison of previous study shown in Table 1, a concept model consisted of 24 potential significant factors were defined. Most of them are supported by background literature. The others, like “Component Description”, “Feeling Description”, “Operation Aid” and “Match Product” were added according to our observation of e-business web sites in US (Amazon.com, Ebay.com) and China (Taobao.com, Ebay.com.cn, joyo.com). Table 1. Potential Factors for E-business Web Sites

Content about Product

Potential Factors Appearance Size Manufacturer Component Description Photo Feeling Description Product Specification Operation Aid Detail Description Quality Content

Price Information

Wrap Customer Comment Aid Function

Content about the Web Site

Contact Information Search and Category Review News Shipment Service Link Responsibility Security Match Product

Literature Support Detlor et. al (2003) Detlor et. al (2003) Detlor et. al (2003) From Observation Detlor et. al (2003) From Observation Detlor et. al (2003) From Observation Resnik, Stern (1977) Szymanski, Hise (2000) Corfu, Laranja, Costa (2003) Resnik, Stern (1977) Detlor et. al (2003) Resnik, Stern (1977) Hilsenrath (2002) Corfu, Laranja, Costa (2003) Detlor et. al (2003) Berr (2006) Detlor et. al (2003) Detlor et. al (2003) Karagiorgoudi, Karatzas (2003) Lydon, Fennell (2003) Corfu, Laranja, Costa (2003) Lydon, Fennell (2003) Detlor et. al (2003) Corfu, Laranja, Costa (2003) Detlor et. al (2003) Corfu, Laranja, Costa (2003) Karagiorgoudi, Karatzas (2003) Lydon, Fennell (2003) Detlor et. al (2003) Karagiorgoudi, Karatzas (2003) Detlor et. Al (2003) Lightner (2003) From Observation

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3 Method The best way to determine what information customers want in e-business operation could be obtained by asking the customers themselves. Hence, a questionnaire was developed for this purpose. The questionnaire was first generated in English according to categories in Table 1, then translated to Chinese. Paper-based survey was selected for the convenience of data collection. Factor analysis was selected to analyze the questionnaire in order to determine how the individual questionnaire items group into specific categories or factors. This analysis provides potentially beneficial information for designers to determine critical factors or attributes. 3.1 Sample The paper-based survey was sent to XOCECO (Xiamen Oversea Chinese Electronic Co.) in Xiamen, mainland China. XOCECO was founded in 1985, also known as PRIMA in the USA. It has about 5,000 employees now and manufactures a wide variety of quality electronics products like PDP TV, LCD TV, HDTV, LCD Monitor, Color TV, FAX machine, other telecommunication products and electronic components. The survey was conducted by the director of the company. Initially, 456 subjects participated in the survey. However, a subject would be eliminated if he or she did not fill out all the questions. In the latter analysis, a subject was consider unreliable and eliminated if he or she made precisely opposite response to the same question. Of the 456 subjects, 16 subjects were deleted because of missing answers, 12 subjects were deleted because of lack of reliability. Therefore, the study used data from the remaining 428 subjects, 93.9% of the original samples. The participants are mostly young people age from 20 to 40 with education level of associate degree or bachelor degree. They are balanced on gender and about half of them are engineers. Most of them have internet experience, but only half of them really have purchased something from the internet. 3.2 Instrument Survey results provide indication of what customers think they may need in a product or service; or what they may like or dislike. Surveys typically form the first stage of scientific inquiry. Hence subsequent to this survey study, highly controlled experimental studies will need to be performed where the participants respond to specific scenarios displayed to them, or computers with which they could interact. All responses to the survey were scored on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Some of the items were worded negatively according to the scale development recommendations to reduce bias. The survey began with general characteristic questions and followed with randomly ordered items from the E-business web site content.

4 Results and Discussion 4.1 Overview The survey has an acceptable overall internal consistency of 0.749, a 0.73 consistency of product description content, and a 0.75 web site service content consistency. The

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means of all related content items ranged from 4.62 to 6.54. Some questions have extremely low or high means. Question 44 (Match Product), Question 56 (View Product), and Question 57 (Shopping Records) have extremely small means. These results show that the experimental participants did not consider these items as important contents. On the other hand, question 4 (Manufacturer Reputation), question 21 (Quality Certificate), question 64 (Privacy) and question 65 (Security) have high means. Therefore, these items were considered very important for online shopping procedure. The standard deviations of all related content items ranged from 0.62 to 1.60. Question 63(Responsibility), Question 64(Privacy) and Question 65(Security) had low standard deviations of 0.64, 0.63 and 0.62. This data indicates that participants had similar attitude towards the items related to their safety or privacy. While Question 44(Match Product), Question 56(View Product), Question 57(Shopping Records) have large standard deviations of, 1.39, 1.39, 1.60. This result shows that participants’ opinions varied a lot on the importance of these items. 4.2 Factor Analysis of Content Preparation for E-Business Web Site Determining the Number of Factors However, by examining eigenvalues, we found that there are 15 factors that had eigenvalues equal or greater than 1.00. Moreover, examination of the scree plot shows that there is an elbow point between 15 factors and 16 factors. Therefore 15 factors are used in this study which explains 60.4% of total variance. Defining the Factors The Appendix shows the results of the orthogonal rotated factor loading using the principle components procedure. Items with loading lower than 0.50 were considered insignificant and eliminated. Appendix also lists the remaining items that have a loading of 0.50 or higher. Only one question, Q17 (benefit of product) is not loaded. The Appendix also provides the rank content factors by importance. Even though Content Security and Quality Content were respectively explain respectively only 2% and 3% of total variance. They are considered the two most important factors for the customers immediately following by Service Content. Even though Factor 1 dealing with Purchasing Aid accounted 22% of the total variance (by far the largest of any of the factors), its mean ranks in the 10th among 15 factors. So when organizations make decision of relative importance of each of the 15 factors, they need to consider both the relative rank of factors with regards to the mean, as well as the total sample variance each factor could explain. 4.3 Effect of Users The results of ANOVA shows that there is no significant differences between genders, neither between different education levels. But significant differences occur between different age groups, career groups, purchasing experience groups, and web experience groups. Tables 2 present the results between age differences. Although there are some statistical significant differences, like the difference between youngest people and oldest people on “View aid Content”. “View Aid Content” means the function that

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allows customer to check the products they recently view, or they shopping records. However, these percentage differences are not practically useful. This means that no special design for special population group is needed. Table 2. Comparison Results of Different Age Groups: Mean, Score and Standard Deviation

No. F5

Factor Name

Group 1 (21-30) 6.27 0.52

Means & Std Group 2 Group 3 (31-40) (41-50) 6.13 6.01 0.52 0.63

Group 4 (51- ) 6.21 0.55

5.74 0.86

6.08 0.72

4.58 0.91

4.48 1.14

Quality Information F7 Appear6.06 5.92 ance In0.65 0.61 formation F9 View aid 5.07 5.04 Content 1.07 0.99 * The percentage of difference between means.

4.4

% of mean * 0.9-4 .0 0.3-5 .9 0.6-1 3.2

F

P

4.49

0.004 1

4.04

0.007 5

5.60

0.0 009

Comparison with Previous Study

As mentioned in section 2.3.3, the most related research was the one done by Detlor et al (2003). 14 important categories were found for pre-purchase study in their study. Both studies found out the important contents for e-business web sites. However the results differ quite a lot. The Detlor study did not include “Security”, “Aid Function” and “Contact Information” which were found very important in this research. The biggest potential reason is the different survey/experimental method. Detlor’s categories were retrieved from open-end questions and free-style experiment by 31 undergraduate students. While this study generated potential factors from literatures, and surveyed by 428 industrial employees. Besides, different analysis tools were applied: Detlor et al. coded and categorized the free-style response by experts, while in this study we employ much more strict tools of factor analysis to retrieve results.

5 Conclusions and Recommendations The Appendix shows that the e-business web site designers should provide secure purchasing environment, detail description of products, description of service, as well as multiple aid function for searching, comparison. Besides, the e-business web site should also provide a convenient and flexible environment for customers. The result of this study could not only be used in the design procedure, but also in the evaluation process of e-business web site. Previous studies about evaluating e-business web site focus mainly on usability, hence this study could a complement. According to the significant factors generated from the questionnaire, and the loaded items in each factor, an evaluation form could be deducted. E-business and online shopping are quite new in China. According to the participants of this study, although most of them had searched product online before, 59.8%

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of the respondents had not really purchased products from online store. Moreover, no subject has online shopping experience longer than 8 years, and most “experienced” subjects began to try online shopping one or two years ago. Compared to the situation in China, most people in the US have online shopping experience of a much longer period. This result means that the e-business in China is still developing, and most of the e-business web sites are still under construction. Based on the big population of China and the current development status, e-business and online shopping are supposed to have an expected great market. Therefore this survey could be applied as a reference of e-business development in China.

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16. Liu, C., Arnett, K.P.: Exploring the Factors Associated with Web site Success in the Context of Electronic Commerce. Information and Management 38(1), 23–33 (2000) 17. Loiacono, E.T., Watson, R.T., Goodhue, D.L.: WebQualTM: A Web site quality instrument. Doctoral Dissertation. University of Georgia (2000) 18. McKinney, V., Yoon, K., Zahedi, F.M.: The measurement of web-customer satisfaction: An expectation and disconfirmation approach. Information Systems Research 13(3), 296–315 (2002) 19. Namjae, C., Hyojae, J.: Information Quality on Consumer Perception: Analysis of Web-based Travel Information. International Journal of Digital Management (2003) 20. Nielsen, J., Molich, R., Snyder, C., Farrell, S.: E-Commerce User Experience. Nielsen Norman Group, CA (2001) 21. Pollach, I.: Corporate Self-Presentation on the WWW. Corporate Communications: An. International Journal 10(4), 285–301 (2005) 22. Proctor, R.W., Vu, K., Salvendy, G., et al.: Content Preparation and Management for Web Design: Eliciting, Structuring, Searching, and Displaying Information. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 14(1), 25–92 (2002) 23. Proctor, R.W., Vu, K.L., Najjar, L.J., Vaughan, M.W., Salvendy, G.: Content Preparation and Management for E-Commerce Web Sites. Communication of the ACM 46(12), 289–299 (2003) 24. Ranganathan, C., Ganapathy, S.: Key Dimensions of Business to Consumer Web Sites. Information and Management 39, 457–465 (2002) 25. Reichheld, F., Schefter, P.: E-Loyalty: Your Secret Weapon on the Web. Harvard Business Review 78, 105–113 (2000) 26. Resnik, A., Stern, B.L.: An Analysis of Information Content in Television Advertising. Journal of Marketing, 50–53 (1977) 27. Robbins, S.S., Stylianou, A.C.: Global Corporate Web Sites: an Empirical Investigation of Content and Design. Journal of Information and Management 40, 205–212 (2000) 28. Szymanski, D.M., Hise, R.T.: E-satisfaction: an initial examination. Journal of Retailing 76(3), 309–322 (2000) 29. Turban, E., Gehrke, D.: Determinants of e-commerce Web site. Human Systems Management 19(2), 111–120 (2000)

Appendix. Importance Factors and Guidelines Rank

Name

Mean

% Explained

1

Security Content

6.42

2%

2

Quality Content

6.20

3%

3

Service Content

6.15

4%

4

Appearance Description

5.99

2%

Guidelines

All related security and privacy documents to customers in a clear way. Detail information of product quality, including the brand information, manufacturer reputation, and quality certificate should be included. The web site should include service time, cost, tracking information, shipment choices. The website should describe the products appearance from all aspects, not only literature description but aid like photo or video.

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5

Contact Information

5.89

2%

6

Aid Function

5.83

2%

7

Customized Function

5.83

2%

The website should allow the customers to set their preferred content or category.

8

Search Function

5.77

3%

9

Product Specification

5.77

1%

Multiple search functions like search by date, brand, prices range, price increment/decrement should be provided, as well as provide multiple categories for customers to find products. The website should tell customers the specification or benefit of products for easy searching and comparison. The website should provide multiple purchasing aid functions and information, like operation guide and printable manual. The website should not only provide the price, but also the price comparison information and discount information. The website should describe the detail information of products, like component, ingredient, color and technical details. The website should allow customers to comment and rate on products they bought, as well as providing the comment information to other customers. The website should provide match choices or related products on the web page for customers’ aim product. The website should provide review function for customers to aid them check the products they just review or the products they order before.

10

Purchasing Aid

5.67

22%

11

Price Content

5.64

2%

5.49

10%

12

Detail Description

13

Comment Content

5.38

2%

14

Matching Product

5.01

2%

15

Review Content

4.95

2%

The website should provide contact information in different ways, like email, telephone, fax, address clearly on the web page. The website should provide aid information like new arrivals and news of the web site.