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What Makes E-Commerce Websites “Sticky?”:
Interactivity and Impulsivity in Online Browsing Behavior
Abstract
This study examined the relationship between interactive attributes and the consumer browsing
behavior at e-commerce websites based on the two contending theoretical frameworks: uses and
gratification theory and social cognitive theory. While the former assumes that consumers are
rational and try to minimize their search and transaction costs through online shopping, the latter
relaxes the assumption of rational consumers arguing that consumers can be impulsive from
deficient self-regulation. From the empirical study of the top 65 e-commerce websites, this study
found out that interactive attributes supporting each of the two contending theoretical
perspectives coexist at e-commerce sites: some attributes promoting rational consumer’s efficient
shopping activity and the others enticing impulsive consumer’s inefficient browsing behavior.
Even among the competing interactive attributes with the opposite directional influences, the
sensory stimulus (the picture size of the products) turned out to be the most influential attribute
for making e-commerce websites sticky by attracting and holding consumers in the websites.
Keywords: electronic commerce, interactivity, rational and impulsive consumers, social
cognitive theory, uses and gratification theory
Convention