Successful Design of Electronic Commerce Environment: On the Role of Sense of Presence in User Behavior

Despite the various benefits of the Internet/World Wide Web (Web) as a business transaction tool, such as lower search cost and greater selection of goods [Bakos 1998], and the millions of web-site visits, serious conduct of electronic commerce (EC) on the web by individual consumers does not appear to have taken root [Jarvenpaa & Todd 1997]. Notwithstanding security and privacy concerns [Kiely 1997], it appears that the current EC systems do not address varying levels of user needs. They fail to provide the rich commerce environment that users typically experience in a physical world; this deficiency might fail to arouse motivation or interest in carrying out “real transactions”. For instance, in a physical commerce environment, consumers can touch and feel the products and freely communicate with sellers about the products they want to buy. On the contrary, consumers in an EC environment might find it difficult to deal with the inherent nature of virtuality in their interaction, especially in a poorly designed EC environment where users might be uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity caused by lack of interaction with products and sellers