From the user interface to the consumer interface: Results from a global experiment

The consumer interface, whereby consumers interact through the World Wide Web to transact consumer commerce, is a vital component of electronic commerce. We are attempting to understand this interface from a perspective that combines concepts from marketing, human-computer interaction and culture. We have conducted an extensive experiment comparing the reactions of subjects in the United Kingdom, United States and Hong Kong to web sites. We used the web sites for the automobile manufacturers VW, Ford and Toyota so we could vary the origin of the site. We used well-known constructs from advertising and marketing research to measure various aspects of the subjects and their reactions to the web site. Our basic finding is that there are fewer differences between subjects than have typically been observed by paper-based marketing experiments. There is no evidence that the origin of the site interacts with the individual. However, after performing a factor analysis on how subjects reported their purpose for using the Internet, we found considerable differences in purpose of use between US and Hong Kong subjects. American subjects are inclined to use the Internet for information search purposes, and the Hong Kong subjects are more inclined to use the Internet for social communication purposes. Further, in both countries there is a relationship between these purposes and subjects having their views on the product transformed.