The Effects of Avatar on Online Consumer Trust and Purchase Intention: the Moderating Effect of Consumer Knowledge

• Main Authors: Ying-Jie Jhu, 朱映潔
• Other Authors: Pi-Chuan Sun
• Format: Others
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/56116117918756484166

碩士 === 大同大學 === 事業經營學系(所) === 96 === It is an emerging trend for firms to use the virtual salesperson to overcome the impersonal nature of online shopping. The virtual salesperson is a graphic character that can be created by technology. With increasing prevalence of online shopping, avatar plays an important role as a salesperson to recommend product to customers. Extant literatures suggest that virtual salesperson can increase customer satisfaction with the online retailer, and purchase intention. However, the recently empirical study suggested that customer trust is important in electronic commerce and using different types of avatar may have different effect on customer’s trust. Thus, different type of avatars is used in this study to examine whether customer’s trusts in avatar can effectively increase purchase intention. However, product knowledge is usually considered as a situational factor when discussing consumer attitude and behavior in previous researches. Thus, the objectives of this study are to discuss the effects of types of avatar on customers’ trust, the effects of customer trust on purchase intention, and the moderating effect of product knowledge. Based on a 2 (expert avatar and attractive avatar) x 2 (high and low of product knowledge) experiment design, data collected from 599 well-known web sit female member was used to test the research hypotheses. The experimental product is skin care product. Results of the study reveal: 1.Either cognitive trust or emotional trust positively affects purchase intention. 2.Emotional trust has stronger influence on purchase intention than does cognitive trust. 3.The effect of type of avatars shows a significant difference on customer trust. For expert avatar, customer cognitive trust is stronger than emotional trust. On the other hand, for attractive avatar, customer emotional trust is stronger than cognitive trust. 4.The moderating effect of subjective knowledge is partially supported. 5.The moderating effect of objective knowledge is partially supported.