Advising Customers on Products in Navigating Online Shops - An Empirical Analysis

摘要

Most online shops do not provide advisory services that take advantage of expert product knowledge. Therefore, consumers may spend a higher search effort than necessary to find products that serve their needs. This study investigates to what extent an ontology-based, "advisory" navigation menu can decrease a consumers' search effort. For this purpose, we conducted a laboratory experiment with 159 participants to assess the impact of an ontology-based navigation menu on participants' information behavior in an online shop. Our log file-based comparison with a conventional navigation menu showed a significant decrease of search effort for the advisory navigation menu. Comparison criteria include the number of product result pages viewed, the number of detail pages viewed, and the amount of filters used in a session. Implications of this research concern the development of online shop interfaces that use ontology-based product catalogues and therefore support consumers in their information search.