The impact of organizational efforts on consumer concerns in an online context

Abstract

As organizations spend a significant amount of their resources on online channels, it is vitally important to understand the effects of this cost on consumer behavior. The author developed and empirically tested an integrated model combining the effects of organizational efforts on consumer concerns, process satisfaction, and purchase intentions. The results of this effort suggested that consumers are still skeptical of the organizational efforts in an online context and their concerns remain a critical factor in influencing their satisfaction and purchase intention. The study provided insights for managers about how they may reduce shopping cart abandonment in online purchasing environment by focusing on consumer concerns.

Introduction

To create and sustain long-term and mutually beneficial online and offline relationships, organizations need to reduce consumers’ perceived risk [6]; increase consumer trust [3] and lessen security and privacy concerns [10]. Addressing these consumer concerns is highly important because consumers increasingly rely on the internet for their regular information search and purchase. Recent cyber-attacks on high profile corporations’ websites and consequent privacy breaches have made these consumers concerns even more important because in such an online context face-to-face interaction is absent, behavioral intentions of the firm is not clear, and often information is collected without the express consent of the consumer [15].

To alleviate these concerns about risk, trust, security, and privacy, organizations need a deeper understanding of how their efforts affect consumer concerns [7]. To achieve this, organizations focus on building a visually appealing website and attempt to reduce errors in information accuracy and website navigation. Additionally, extant research has suggested that brand image of an organization and its order management processes can positively influence consumer perceptions [21]. Based on such factors, it seemed necessary to perform research on the effects of four important organizational effort components: the visual appearance of a web-site, its order fulfillment process, its absence of errors, and its brand image.

Although, prior literature has highlighted the importance of consumer concerns and researchers have suggested potential antecedents and consequences of consumer concerns (see: [19]), the direct relationship between organizational efforts and consumer concerns and their simultaneous influence on process satisfaction and purchase intentions has yet to be explored. Additionally, there is a significant body of literature focusing on the online environment. However, researchers note that the online marketplaces have changed substantially recently and have emphasized the need to develop new frameworks which capture the realities of a changing consumption environment [2]. My study attempted to address this by offering insights into consumer perceptions of management controlled variables and their impact on consumer decision making specifically, by developing and empirically examining an integrative framework and asking: (a) What organizational efforts influence consumer concerns in online context and to what extent? (b) What is the inter-relationship between the consumer-concern variables? And (c) How do consumer-concern variables affect process satisfaction and purchase intentions?