Presentation of a paper studying the hedonic and utilitarian "functional affordances" and "symbols" of design artifacts found in online social shopping websites (e.g. product reviews, online shoppers' profile, list of other shoppers' favorite products).
Online Social Shopping: the Affordances and Symbols of Design Artifacts
1. Online Social Shopping: The Functions and Symbols of Design Artifacts Camille Grange and Izak Benbasat HICSS, Kawaii, January 8 th 2010
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6. 03 Social Design Artifacts We call online social shopping design artifacts the E-commerce related artifacts that leverage the participation of other shoppers, i.e., the artifacts that exploit people-related as well as product-related user-generated content. John Sustainable products interest group Danish design interest group Victor Lens Mat Kate Erin Ron
13. 06 Findings The role of motives in influencing shoppers’ affordances and symbols perceptions Expected Results
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15. Thank you very much for your attention. Comments? Questions ? Suggestions? Contact: [email_address]
Notas do Editor
-Objectives: Position this paper among the type of work done at UBC and in the e-Commerce field in general Introduce my specific focus: how relevant the social shopping phenomenon is, how it expands existing research (e.g., different from Ebay studies where people are vendors, different from other artifacts in that social artifacts can both provide hedonic/social and utilitarian value) Present the overall spirit of my research, i.e., at the intersection of three themes Present Markus and Silver’s work and define the principal concepts that we are using: affordances and symbols -Precision: Interesting that the phenomenon is not so NEW though (ex NY times article in 2006; like shopping, like social networking, you’ll like social shopping) -Some questions and tentative answers: -the “social” aspect : so eBay already much studied ? Well, in this study people are are peers. In studies of trust in vendors in eBay for example, the people are “vendors” not other shoppers. Hence, they are different. -Why the study of social shopping artifacts should be different (or use different theoretial frames) than other e-Commerce studies? We think these artifacts are different from other artifacts e-Commerce has studied because they have the potential to satisfy both utilitarian (e.g., find a good product, make a better decision, make a quicker decision) and hedonic needs (e.g., discuss products with others, follow popular trends, explore what shoppers experts are saying, etc.) References for the duality of shopping motivations and value: Childers et al. 2001 (motivation); Babin et al. 1994 (value) Functional affordances: the potential uses one can make from a technical object, i.e., the possibilities for goal-directed behavior given one’s goals and capabilities Symbolic expressions: the underlying value-laden intent of a technical object that will guide use for a specific user group. Analogy with the law: the letters of the law (the text) vs. the spirit of the law (e.g., conservative, liberal, totalitarist, democratic…)
-Objectives: Position this paper among the type of work done at UBC and in the e-Commerce field in general Introduce my specific focus: how relevant the social shopping phenomenon is, how it expands existing research (e.g., different from Ebay studies where people are vendors, different from other artifacts in that social artifacts can both provide hedonic/social and utilitarian value) Present the overall spirit of my research, i.e., at the intersection of three themes Present Markus and Silver’s work and define the principal concepts that we are using: affordances and symbols -Precision: Interesting that the phenomenon is not so NEW though (ex NY times article in 2006; like shopping, like social networking, you’ll like social shopping) -Some questions and tentative answers: -the “social” aspect : so eBay already much studied ? Well, in this study people are are peers. In studies of trust in vendors in eBay for example, the people are “vendors” not other shoppers. Hence, they are different. -Why the study of social shopping artifacts should be different (or use different theoretial frames) than other e-Commerce studies? We think these artifacts are different from other artifacts e-Commerce has studied because they have the potential to satisfy both utilitarian (e.g., find a good product, make a better decision, make a quicker decision) and hedonic needs (e.g., discuss products with others, follow popular trends, explore what shoppers experts are saying, etc.) References for the duality of shopping motivations and value: Childers et al. 2001 (motivation); Babin et al. 1994 (value) Functional affordances: the potential uses one can make from a technical object, i.e., the possibilities for goal-directed behavior given one’s goals and capabilities Symbolic expressions: the underlying value-laden intent of a technical object that will guide use for a specific user group. Analogy with the law: the letters of the law (the text) vs. the spirit of the law (e.g., conservative, liberal, totalitarist, democratic…)
Story: John is an online shopper who has created his profile on his favorite online shopping network, and reviewed a couple of products (green arrow). In this network, he is directly related (blue link) to other customers such as Lens, Kate, and Mat. Lens and Kate have not reviewed (or commented on) products yet, but Kate has joined an interest group in Danish design. Matt has made a list of his favorite products but not reviewed any yet. John is also a member of a group where shoppers have a special interest for sustainable products, and in that group, one of the members is related to Ron who has reviewed one of the product Mat included in his favourite list. Thanks to the network, John can access to his contacts’ contacts and expand his reach on product and people-related information. In online social shopping networks/environments, designers can help shoppers by helping them be aware, access, navigate the network of people and product-related resources. This is a challenge because, as this example shows, shoppers risk getting lost or overloaded with information. Designers can also help shoppers by helping them evaluate the resources, i.e., once they have stopped on their way to evaluate a product or a product reviewer, for instance, they need appropriate information to help him/her judge the product (e.g., is it good, popular) or the person (e.g., is he/she reliable, popular, expert, well-informed, interested in similar products).
- FA : This exercise resulted in an overall hit ratio of 83%, well balanced between FAU (84%) and FAH (81%). After getting rid of the items that were still ambiguous (i.e., less than 70% of correct placement), we were left with the 26 remaining items for which the overall hit ratio reached 87% (86% and 88% for FAU and FAH, respectively), - SE : an overall hit ratio of 84% for the ten remaining items.
-Online survey; N=138; online shoppers; US + Canada; nationwide marketing panel -For each artifact, respondents were asked to evaluate the extent to which it would support certain activities (FA) and the extent to which it promoted certain goals (SE), e.g., “ what goals are being promoted through artifact X ” (SE), - from 1. not at all to 7. to a very great extent” 1 “ What would you use shoppers-created product lists for (FA). – same scale . -For each artifact, the items for SE were all the 10 items from the card sorting exercise (Table 2). Conversely, the items for FAs, were for each artifact a subset of the 26 items identified in the card sorting exercise (because of space constraints as well as because some FAs were more or less relevant depending on the artifact) (Table 3). Finally, respondents were also asked to estimate the PU, PE, and overall expected value for each artifact.
Overall finding ? -Higher hedonic motivation (have fun, have a good time…) is strongly associated with higher perceptions of either utilitarian or hedonic affordances! -Higher utilitarian motivation (
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