A Study on the Influence of Web Atmospherics and Mobile Characteristics on Browsing and the Urge to Buy in Mobile Commerce---The Mediating Role of Pad Emotions and the Moderating Role of Habitual Use

Mobile commerce is getting an emerging trend for doing online business. People are gradually used to purchase goods, make payment, search information and manage personal finance by mobile devices. It is reported that 43.7~48.7% of consumers shopped by mobile devices in Double 11 festivals of Chain. Among these consumers by mobile devices, their purchasing behaviors were most happened at midnight because they used mobile device in bed. Literatures in mobile commerce have been lasted several years. However, the mobile services now are great different. The services no longer delivered by text message. Apps and mobile advertising are more popular and attractive. The dedicated web pages for mobile devices are developed. Most literatures related to mobile services pay attention on factors from perspectives of TAM, TBP, DOI, and UTAUT. But, we think users’ feeling should be noticed, such as perceived value, immersion, commitment, or enjoyment when the online shopping in mobile commerce is gradually be accepted and widely used. The fluent, ubiquitous, universal and convenient functionality of mobile devices increased users’ positive emotions towards mobile commerce and in turn enhance users’ devotion for activities in mobile commerce. The linkage of web atmospherics and positive emotion is usually discussed in e-commerce, but seldom discussed detailed in mobile commerce. Positive emotions are more than perceived enjoyment or flow and also include dominance and arousal. Users feel enjoyment and are like to stay in web pages longer if they could control their own way to navigate web pages, as well as if they are excited and curious in content of web pages. Although the mobility and ubiquity of smart phones bring users convenience, users could easily stop when they find something else to do and the usage may not last long time. It is important to induce users’ purchase behavior for online retailers. So, we think that it would be valuable to investigate users’ impulse buying in mobile commerce. However, little research focuses on this issue. Accordingly, we expect to investigate users’ urge to buy and browsing activities in mobile commerce from the emotional perceptive. We plan to apply stimulus-organism-response framework and the pleasure-arousal-dominance model for exploring the influence of environmental stimuli (web atmospherics and mobile characteristics) to positive emotions, and sequent behavioral responses. The SOR paradigm and PAD model are usually utilized in e-tailing environment, but little in the context of mobile commerce. In addition to intention of impulse buying, browsing is an important behavioral response. If users stay longer on the web pages because of immersion, they will tend to have an urge to buy something. However, users may not really purchase something by mobile devices, instead of just browsing web pages and buy the interested products in e-commerce because of constraints of mobile devices. So, we proposed that users’ habit in using mobile device could increase the possibility of pushing users from just browsing web pages to conduct mobile shopping. This study will conduct online surveys for data collection. We will propose theoretical and managerial implications based on results of data analysis.

Project ID:PB10406-1561
External Project ID:MOST104-2410-H182-023