Abstract

Consumer reviews, web atmospherics, and other specific exogenous factors currently play a key role in everyone’s purchase decisions, and thus the proposed research will include efforts of the researcher to analyse the impact of online consumer reviews, web atmospherics, and exogenous factors on consumer behaviours and their purchase decisions. In brief, it is observed that more and more consumers are now making their decisions based on product- related reviews available on the internet before they buy a product, and thus the proposed research will endeavour to analyse such an impact by using both secondary and primary research methodology to fulfil the aims and objectives of the research. The aim of this research is to evaluate the collective influence of web atmospherics, consumers’ reviews and ratings, and major exogenous forces on consumer behaviours and their purchase decisions, and to explore possible inter-linkages between these three factors within the process.

The study will seek the opinions of specialists and web marketers on this topic, and will utilise secondary research to gather information concerning the significance of web atmospherics on consumer behaviour. The study will explore how access to web atmospherics impacts on consumer reviews/ratings and its eventual influence on consumer purchasing behaviour. For this study, the data will be collected using a survey for respondents who sell and purchase goods online, not involving the opinions of buyers who have no experience of online purchases. Geographically, this research will only be conducted in UK.

A generic model that studies the combined effects of these three factors on the e-tail purchase decision is introduced in this research, providing a visual overview of these primary impact factors including web atmospherics, consumer reviews and exogenous factors. Although each of these dimensions has been independently shown to impact on behavioural outcomes, this study will provide a comprehensive analysis, incorporating these factors to Page 5 of 241 create a more accurate model of behavioural affectation. This detailed framework is a combination of multiple concepts and models, combining different factors that have not yet been explored collectively in any prior research. The outcomes of this research will yield a comprehensive study which considers all the factors that could possibly shape online consumer behaviour.

The current study conducted a major survey of a sample of over 500 participants from the online shopping community in the UK, as a global leading economy. The study claims that it has achieved such a collective approach using the analysis of various factors (represented here by web atmospherics, customers’ reviews, and many other external factors), these being analysed together in realistic real-life conditions, as was attempted previously. The study findings bridge a gap in knowledge in several different facets that can benefit various parties who are usually involved with the online shopping industry. Thus, this research will be beneficial to the managers of online stores to assess the effectiveness of their online purchase services. Not only for managers, the quality of such services is also brought to light for the benefit of customers, organisations and researchers, and consequently to the global Internet shopper community, which is expanding exponentially in numbers and locations. The results of the research are also expected to contribute to the design and development of proper online shopping services, in terms of policies, privacy, security, trust, information provision, navigation and procedures in the area of online services needed by the users. To conclude, the current research contributes to exploring consumer satisfaction, purchasing and repeated purchasing via online stores’ websites, as seen from different angles within a major economy of the world.