Shopping alone online vs. co-browsing: A physiological and perceptual comparison.

摘要

Although shopping is a social activity frequently performed with friends and family members, most online shopping is done alone. With the development of Web 2.0 technologies and the increasing popularity of social networking sites, online social shopping has emerged as a new phenomenon that allows more social interaction, participation, and satisfaction for customers while shopping online. Therefore, companies have started to use social shopping tools in their e-commerce websites to facilitate online social shopping. Co-browsing is one of the more recent online social shopping tools available, enabling users to shop or browse together by offering synchronized web views and chat facilities. Prior research in co-browsing focused primarily on the technical and design aspects of co-browsing. More needs to be done to understand the behavioral, emotional, and social aspect of co-browsing. In this study, we focus on the social aspect of co-browsing and explore the following research questions: (1) How does co-browsing affect consumers' cognitive beliefs, emotions, and behaviors? (2) How is co-browsing different than shopping alone online? To address these questions, an experimental study is performed, which includes shopping alone and shopping with a companion by using a co-browsing tool. By recording and analyzing physiological responses such as eye gaze and skin conductance, we are able to gain better insight into how individuals react—both physically and perceptually—to co-browsing during an online shopping task.