Modeling the structure of the flow experience

The flow construct (Csikszentmihaly 1977) has recently been proposed by Hoffman and Novak (1996) as essential to understanding consumer navigation behaviour in online environments such as the World Wide Web. Previous researchers (e.g. Csikszentmihalyi 1990, Ghani, Supnick and Rooney 1991, Trevino and Webster 1992, Webster, Trevino and Ryan 1993) have noted that flow is a useful construct for describing more general human-computer interactions. Hoffman and Novak define flow as the state occurring during network navigation which is: 1) characterized by a seamless sequence of responses facilitated by machine interactivity, 2) intrinsically enjoyable, 3) accompanied by a loss of self-consciousness, and 4) selfreinforcing.i To experience flow while engaged in an activity, consumers must perceive a balance between their skills and the challenges of the activity, and both their skills and challenges must be above a critical threshold. Hoffman and Novak (1996) propose that flow has a number of positive consequences from a marketing perspective, including increased consumer learning, exploratory behaviour, and positive affect