Disentangling utilitarian and hedonic consumption behavior in online shopping: An expectation disconfirmation perspective

Abstract

Increasingly, researchers have come to acknowledge that consumption activities entail both utilitarian and hedonic components. Whereas utilitarian consumption accentuates the achievement of predetermined outcomes typical of cognitive consumer behavior, its hedonic counterpart relates to affective consumer behavior in dealing with the emotive and multisensory aspects of the shopping experience. Consequently, while utilitarian consumption activities appeal to the rationality of customers in inducing their intellectual buy-in of the shopping experience, customers’ corresponding emotional buy-in can only be attained through the presence of hedonic consumption activities. The same can be said for online shopping. Because the online shopping environment is characterized by the existence of an IT-enabled web interface that acts as the focal point of contact between customers and vendors, its design should embed utilitarian and hedonic elements to create a holistic shopping experience. Building on Expectation Disconfirmation Theory (EDT), this study advances a research model that not only delineates between customers’ utilitarian and hedonic expectations for online shopping but also highlights how these expectations can be best served through functional and esthetic performance, respectively. Furthermore, we introduce online shopping experience (i.e., transactional frequency) as a moderator affecting not only how customers form utilitarian and hedonic expectations but also how they evaluate the functional and esthetic performances of e-commerce sites. The model is then empirically validated via an online survey questionnaire administered on a sample of 303 respondents. Theoretical contributions and pragmatic implications to be gleaned from our research model and its subsequent empirical validation are discussed.

Introduction

Consumption activities encompass both utilitarian and hedonic elements [1,2]. Utilitarian consumption appeals to customers’ rationality by accentuating the attainment of desired outcomes from shopping activities [3], whereas hedonic consumption is tied to the emotive and multisensory aspects of the shopping experience [4]. The same sentiments have been echoed by more recent e-commerce research [5,6]. Although substantive research has been conducted on the utilitarian facets of online shopping, recognition of the hedonic value of Information Technology (IT) has gained in momentum among both academics [1,2,[15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21],[7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]] and practitioners [22].

Past studies have demonstrated that customers treat IT artifacts embedded within e-commerce sites as social actors and ascribe human-like characteristics to them during interactions [23]. Insofar as e-commerce sites are deemed as social entities by customers, online shopping must not only fulfill its intended utilitarian function [24] but also deliver a hedonically charged transactional experience [1,2,[26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31],[8], [9], [10],12,14,15,21,25]. Although prior research has alluded to a dual role of online shopping in fulfilling both utilitarian and hedonic functions, scholars have largely emphasized “a behavioral or cognitive focus, with less attention to hedonic elements of the consumption experience that focus on affective consumer behavior as elicited from emotive and multisensory elements.” [14, p. 540]. Even for the handful of studies that have sought to comprehend how hedonic experience manifests in online shopping, they tend to concentrate on prescribing aesthetic properties for e-commerce sites [7,10] without considering whether these functionalities are desired by customers. This runs contrary to overwhelming empirical evidence that attests to the criticality of taking into account customers’ expectations in relation to their satisfaction [37,38,40].

Indeed, there is a dearth of research that has strived to unravel the utilitarian and hedonic determinants underpinning customers’ expectations and performance evaluations of e-commerce sites. Given the pivotal role of the expectation–performance gap in driving customer satisfaction [37,38,40], it is imperative to not only acknowledge that customers’ evaluation of the performance of e-commerce sites must conform to or exceed their expectations to be assured of a satisfactory online shopping experience but also concede that customers’ expectations and performance evaluations are governed by a duality of cognitive and affective elements.

Apart from the expectation–performance gap, customers’ familiarity with e-commerce sites has been found to moderate their evaluation of and receptivity toward these sites. As asserted by Hernandez et al. [33], customers’ online shopping experience “exerts a moderating effect on certain perceptions that have traditionally defined attitude and intention to buy” [p. 1240, 32]. Yet, despite giving due credit to the moderating influence of online shopping experience on customers’ interaction with e-commerce sites, past studies have largely centered on deciphering how such experience translates into perceptual changes from pre- to post-adoption stages or dictates subsequent repurchasing behavior [[32], [33], [34]]. In other words, the bulk of research has oversimplified the distinction between experienced and inexperienced customers by treating experience as a dichotomy [35,36]. As illustrated by Tan et al. [37], a finer-grained appreciation of user experience as a continuum is necessary to yield more nuanced understanding of how such experience impacts one’s evaluation of system performance.

Drawing on the Expectation Disconfirmation Theory (EDT) [[38], [39], [40]], we advance a research model that not only posits (1) feelings of satisfaction as arising from customers’ evaluation of whether the functional and esthetic performances of e-commerce sites cater to the fulfillment of their utilitarian and hedonic expectations, respectively, but also postulates (2) online shopping experience (i.e., transactional frequency) as a moderator affecting not only how customers form utilitarian and hedonic expectations but also how they evaluate the functional and esthetic performances of these sites relative to the transactional functionalities and aesthetic properties being offered.

In this sense, this study endeavors to contribute to extant literature in two ways. First, we extend the EDT by delineating between utilitarian and hedonic aspects of customers’ expectations as well as distinguishing between transactional functionalities and aesthetic properties as performance indicators shaping their satisfaction with e-commerce sites. Second, we explore how customers’ online shopping experience (i.e., transactional frequency) would moderate the impact of cognitive and affective aspects of shopping activities on their expectations and performance evaluations of e-commerce sites. In so doing, this study offers an in-depth comprehension of how customers’ utilitarian and hedonic disconfirmations materialize from granular dissonance between their expectations and performance evaluations of e-commerce sites.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we build on past studies to construct a theoretical model of utilitarian and hedonic consumption behaviors in online shopping together with testable hypotheses. Specifically, our model draws on the EDT in distinguishing between utilitarian and hedonic elements of online shopping as focal antecedents of customer satisfaction toward e-commerce sites. We then arrive at separate typologies of utilitarian and hedonic expectations that drive customers’ evaluation of e-commerce sites and prescribe design features, which could be offered by e-merchants to fulfill these expectations. We also put forth online shopping experience, in the form of transactional frequency, as a moderator affecting customers’ evaluations of e-commerce sites. Subsequently, in the methodology section, we outline an empirical study to validate the hypothesized relationships in our theoretical model and summarize key analytical findings. We conclude the paper with a discussion section that highlights the insights to be gleaned from this investigtion in informing the design of e-commerce sites. We also point out potential limitations and suggest probable avenues for future research.