THE EFFECTS OF PERCEIVED INTERACTIVITY ON E-TRUST AND E-CONSUMER BEHAVIORS: THE APPLICATION OF FUZZY LINGUISTIC SCALE

Abstract

This paper identified the components of interactivity and investigated the impact of perceived interactivity on customer trust and transaction intentions in e-commerce. Data for this study were gathered in 2011 by means of a questionnaire administered to a convenience sample of 512 graduate students and business workers in Kaohsiung, Taiwan and Shanghai, China. Owing to the problem of dilution of measuring results due to the traditional linguistic value in which every scale interval is equal can be solved by using the fuzzy linguistic scale. Therefore, the empirical results indicate that the level of perceived interactivity is a major determinant of e-trust and e-loyalty through the fuzzy linguistic questionnaire. The findings suggest that perceived interactivity has positive effects on the user that ultimately result in e-loyalty behavior. Further, the fuzzy linguistic scale enables researchers not only to deal with different recognition styles, but also to notice differences in individuals by providing different linguistic variable combinations for researching purpose. Finally, the outcomes will be of interest to web designers and online marketers for how to enhance interactive online web applications.