Hedonic and utilitarian motivations for online retail shopping behavior

Motivations to engage in retail shopping include both utilitarian and hedonic dimensions. Business to consumer e-commerce conducted via the mechanism of web-shopping provides an expanded opportunity for companies to create a cognitively and esthetically rich shopping environment in ways not readily imitable in the nonelectronic shopping world. In this article an attitudinal model is developed and empirically tested integrating constructs from technology acceptance research and constructs derived from models of web behavior. Results of two studies from two distinct categories of the interactive shopping environment support the differential importance of immersive, hedonic aspects of the new media as well as the more traditional utilitarian motivations. In addition, navigation, convenience, and the substitutability of the electronic environment to personally examining products were found to be important predictors of online shopping attitudes. Results are discussed in terms of insights for the creation of the online shopping webmosphere through more effective design of interactive retail shopping environments. (C) 2001 by New York University. All rights reserved.