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Facilitating Flow in the Internet Shopping Experience

The Internet has impacted how we shop. This dissertation focuses on opening the black box of consumer experience in online retailing environments. In order to do so, a microscopic approach is used to detail the processes and internal states of a customer when interacting with a commercial web site. Based on previous research from related fields, a new concept of Shopping Experience is proposed to study the dynamic, on-going interaction between a customer and commercial web sites. Shopping Experience is defined as an episode of interaction between a customer and web sites. Flow is an optimal and intrinsically engrossing and enjoyable experience, which is so inner rewarding that people want to repeat it. How to achieve flow in web shopping? What are the factors that facilitate or hinder flow? A series of studies are carried out to programmatically tackle these questions. First, exploratory studies are used to verify the concept of shopping experience and phenomenon of flow in the Internet shopping. Secondly, more effort is undertaken to validate measures of relevant constructs. Finally, a controlled experiment is used to gauge the effect of two factors, namely design factor and task factor. The dissertation will provide deeper understanding of facilitating factors of optimal shopping experience, which certainly will help to build better online shopping environments.