線上購物資訊需求研究:產品類型與消費者產品知識議題

Abstract

由於網路環境的限制，使得消費者無法直接檢視產品，因此產品判斷成為一個困難的任務。對於購物網站來說，提供相關的資訊或服務來協助消費者在購物網站中，達成購買決策是重要的。為了能夠達成給予適當資訊的目標，有兩個議題需要被探討。首先，當消費者可能會依據不同產品屬性而需要不同的資訊或服務時，網路商店應該提供哪種資訊類別應該小心地被檢驗。第二，消費者產品知識的程度應該被納入考量，以探討產品知識因素如何影響消費者的資訊尋求行為與購買決策。 依據上述的議題，本研究的目的便是針對對於產品知識高或低的消費者來說，當其在網路上進行不同類別的產品購買時，會分別需要哪些資訊來進行探討。此外，消費者的購買過程將會被區分為搜尋階段、評估階段與交易階段來進行分析。 本研究發現，對於大部分的網路消費者而言，在購買「搜尋性產品」時，認為詳實的產品資訊較為重要，有趣地是，購買「經驗性產品」時，消費者則是需要廣告文宣或他人的使用經驗。此外，擁有較低產品知識的消費者，偏愛透過實體商店來體驗產品，相對地，較高產品知識的消費者則是能夠依據網路上所給予的資訊做出購買決策。因此，本研究認為購物網站的設計應該根據消費者的產品知識與欲購買的產品類型，給予特定的資訊，以協助消費者制定網路購買的決策。

Due to the limitations of internet environment, consumers are unable to directly inspect the product which has made the judgment of product quality become such an awkward task. It is very important for online stores to provide related information or services to compromise consumers’ needs in the decision making during the shopping process. In order to achieve the goal of providing appropriate information, two issues should be considered in advance. First, what types of information should be provided by these online stores should be carefully examined since consumers might need different information or services according to different attributes of products. Secondary, the degree of consumers’ knowledge for specific product should be taken into account for how this factor might influence their information seeking behaviors and decision making. Considering above issues, the purpose of the present study was mainly designed to investigate what kinds of information might be needed for consumers with high or low product knowledge especially when go shopping online for different types of products. In addition, the consumer’s shopping procedure was divided into three phases - research phase, evaluation phase, and transaction phase for further analysis. The research results show that for most of online consumers, the detail product description will be more important information when they were planning to buy the “Search product”. Interesting enough, for the purchase of “Experience product”, the most wanted information for consumers are the advertisement and the owner opinion. Moreover, consumers with low degree of product knowledge would prefer to experience products in personal by going to the real store. In contrast, consumers with high degree of product knowledge could simply rely on the internet information for their purchase decision. Based on research findings, it is suggested that the designs of online stores should provide specific information according to consumers’ product knowledge and product categories to shorten as well as to support the decision making process during online shopping.