Have you ever wondered how a website's design influences your purchasing decisions? Have you thought about what subconscious cues are used to prompt you to purchase more online? My dissertation assesses how the aesthetics and interactivity elements of a website influence customer's purchasing decisions. In addition, I am also exploring how a customer's psychographic group membership consciously and subconsciously affects what products they purchase.
The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) serves as my theoretical framework. Developed by Petty and Cacioppo (1986), it explains how attitudes are developed and changed through two routes of persuasion: central and peripheral. The central route of persuasion allows the person to evaluate the logical and rational arguments, provided the person has the ability and motivation to do so.
The interactivity, or functional element, of a website is considered to be a central route of persuasion. Interactivity includes online customer service, product reviews, technical support, etc. Customers typically use this cue to assess the quality of the company they are ordering from and the quality of the product they will receive.
A person can also use a peripheral route to process an argument. This route looks at the irrelevant parts of an argument like characteristics of the message, number of arguments, or attractiveness of the source. Customers who use peripheral information to make decisions will typically make irrational choices that do not maximize their utility.
Website aesthetics is considered to be a peripheral cue. This includes color, layout, and font. The appearance of a website is not predictive of the quality of the company or product. Customers will spend more time looking at products on an aesthetic website than one that is not. This time investment influences their decision to purchase from said website.
Attitudes that are formed under the peripheral route are considered less stable than those formed under the central route. This means that central route persuasion is more stable over time and is less susceptible to decay or any type of counter-persuasion. A given variable can serve as an argument, a biasing factor, self-validation role, or a peripheral cue depending on what route it is processed through.
ELM does not fully explain customer's online decision making. Psychographic group membership is used to continue to explain how customers make online purchases. Psychographic groups are segment customer's by their resources, risk orientation, motivation, and demographics. Most customers are not aware of the psychographic group they fall into. Therefore, I was interested in how customer's decision would be altered based on what psychographic group I told them that they belonged to.
Lee Derryberry
2013 Business Psychology Psy D Candidate
The Chicago School of Professional Psychology
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