Perceptions of Customer Service,Information Privacy,and Product Quality From Semiotic Design Features in an Online Web Store

MarcL.Resnick RaquelMontania

IndustrialandSystemsEngineeringFloridaInternationalUniversity

The rise of the World Wide Web for electronic commerce has led to a proliferation ofcompaniessellingproductsonline.TheglobalnatureoftheInternetallowscustomersto browse the products of companies with which they are wholly unfamiliar. How-ever, concerns about customer service, information privacy, and product quality dis-courage purchasing from unknown companies. In this article, the effects of semioticWebdesignfeaturesonexpectationsoftheseperformancecriteriainapurchasesitua-tion are investigated. Specifically, the presence and prominence of links to customerservice and a site privacy policy, and the existence of product ratings and customertestimonials, were tested to measure their effects on customer perceptions and expec-tations.Resultsindicatethatsomedesignfeatureshaveastrongsemioticeffectoncus-tomer expectations. Prominent links to customer service and a site privacy policy sig-nificantly increased expectations of customer service and privacy protection. Thepresenceofproductratingsincreasedperceptionsofproductquality.All3designfea-tures led to increased likelihood of purchase. Furthermore, participants were notawareoftheseeffectsandreportednotconsideringproductratingsintheirdecisions.ImplicationsoftheseresultsonWebsitedesignandconsumerbehaviorarediscussed.

1. INTRODUCTION

Internet retail sales jumped from a mere $700 million annually in 1996 to over $53 billion in the United States in 2001. Forrester Research (2000) originally predictedthat this total would rise to $380 billion by 2003. However, these predictions have been considerably reduced. Even before the 2001 slowdown in the U.S. economy,E-marketer (1999) predicted that growth would be half what is was in 2000. Sur-veys have suggested that pessimistic predictions about electronic commerce

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION,

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(e-commerce)salescanbeavoidedifWebsitesfindawaytoovercomeconsumers’general lack of trust in Internet vendors (Pastore, 2000a).ReportedreasonsthatmanyInternetusersarenotbuyingonlineisthattheybe-lieve that companies on the Web have poor, slow, or nonexistent customer serviceoptions and that they are afraid or reluctant to disclose personal information(E-marketer, 1999). Indeed, difficulty of use and lack of trust with respect to onlinepayment, privacy, and customer service have been found to constitute a real psy-chological barrier to e-commerce (Egger, 2000). Whereas trust develops over time,communicating trustworthiness must occur as soon as interaction with a site be-gins (Cheskin Research, 1999). A1999 survey by Servicesoft Technologies (E-mar-keter, 1999) revealed that 87% of online shoppers who spent $2,000 or more on theweb during a 6-month period would abandon a merchant’s Web site and click to acompetitor’s site if they experienced poor customer service. Conversely, 79% saidtheyhaveincreasedtheirpatronageandspendingataWebsitewhencustomerser-vice was favorable (E-marketer, 1999). Thus, the improvement of these aspects ofan e-commerce Web site’s design can have a significant effect on customer loyaltyand purchase behavior.

1.1. Semiotics

Semiotics

isthestudyofsignsandsymbolsthatconveysemanticandsyntacticcon-tent and their use as a communicative tool (Karvonen & Parkkinen, 2001).Orliaguet(2001)describedtheuseofsemioticsindesignasamediationlinkingtwoexperiences. The design feature provides an immediate experience that recalls amore complex experience from the user’s history. The user’s interpretation of thedesignfeaturemustbeidentifiedandisthefocusofthedisciplineofsemiotics.Ifapopulationofusersinterpretsthedesignfeaturesimilarly,itcanbeusedeffectivelyin a system. This mediation process allows designers to provide a simple link thatrepresents a much richer set of experiences that would be difficult to represent di-rectly in the design.Inuserinterfacedesign,semioticscanbeusedtoconveyparticularaspectsofade-signtoauserwithoutrequiringexplicitlabelsorinstructions.ThisissimilartotheconceptofaffordancesdescribedbyNorman(1988)astheperceivedpropertiesofathingthatdeterminehowitcanbeused.Aswithaffordances,semioticimpressionscan be conveyed subtly or even accidentally by design features of a system. Lytie(2001)presentedasemioticmodelofsoftwareinwhichametaphoraffectstheinter-pretation of semiotic features. The metaphor provides structural characteristics oftheuserinterfacethattriggerspecificusercognitionsandfacilitatecomprehension.Inthecaseofretaile-commerce,semioticcuesincludethedesigncharacteristicsthatlead users to develop expectations for company behavior in areas such as privacyprotection,security,andcustomerservice.Previousresearchhasestablishedthatex-pectations for customer service (E-marketer, 1999), trust (Cheskin Research, 1999;Egger,2000),andprivacyprotection(Palmer,Bailey,&Fraj,2000)affectwillingnessto use and purchase from an e-commerce site. However, no research has identifiedthe semiotic relation between interface design features and these expectations.

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1.2. Trust

Trust

isasetofbeliefsthatotherpeoplewillfulfilltheirexpectedfavorablecommit-ments.Fromtheperspectiveofthecustomer–vendorrelationship,trustisthebeliefor expectation that the word or promise by the merchant can be relied on and theseller will not take advantage of the customer’s vulnerability (Geyskens,Steenkamp,Scheer,&Kumar,1996).Recentbusinessresearchhastakenacompara- blestand,definingtrustastheexpectationthatotherindividualsorcompanieswill behave ethically and dependably and will fulfill their expected commitments un-der conditions of vulnerability and interdependence (Gefen, 2000).In the case of retail e-commerce, trust is particularly important. Customers can-not see the merchant, only the merchant’s Web site; they are unable to touch themerchandise, they can only see a representation; they cannot wander a store andspeak with employees, they can only browse HTML pages, read FAQs, and sende-mailto customer servicemailboxes.Acustomer atan onlinecommercesitelacksconcrete cues to comfortably assess the trustworthiness of the site and thereforemustrelyonnewkindsofcues.Theinterpretationofthesesemioticcuesdrivesthedevelopment of customer expectations of the trustworthiness of the vendor.

Customer service.

Customerserviceisanessentialingredientofcommercialtransactions. In the broadest sense, it involves a company’s response to customerquestions and problems. Customers often need to contact a company because ofconcernsaboutthefulfillmentprocessortoidentifythestatusofaserviceoranac-count.ThiscustomerinteractionisthefocusofInternetcustomerservice.Virtuallyevery area of customer service can be handled via the Internet. Customers can askquestions via e-mail, search support databases for similar problems or questions,and request a live chat session with a customer service or sales representative. TheInternet cannot replace good customer interaction between vendors and their cli-ents, but it can be used to strengthen those ties (Grant, 1998).However, customers may not be able to experience the online customer serviceofacompanypriortomakingapurchasedecision.Touseservicequalityaspartoftheir decision of where to make a purchase, customers need to interpret thesemiotic cues about customer service on the Web site. However, the characteristicsof a Web store’s design that lead to perceptions of good customer service are notknown.

Reputation management.

According to a user survey (Graphic, Visualiza-tion & Usability Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology, 1999), “access toopinions of other customers” and “reviews and recommendations from experts”are among the main reasons for using the Web for electronic commerce. However,theeffectivenessofratingsandtestimonialsdependsontheirreliabilityandbeliev-ability.Reputationmanagersaresystemsthatcollectratingsdataandpresentthemto prospective customers. The design of the reputation management system willdetermineitscredibilityandthusitseffectiveness(Nielsen,1999a).Therearemany