Research + Design
Time and Social Influences on Purchase Intention for Deal-Based E-commerce Websites
This is an experimental group project for Research Methods for Human-Computer Interaction class. I worked on the development of the concept, research and data collection.
ABSTRACT
Recently, e-commerce companies have developed new business models, such as deal, auction and social based models. These new models have undoubtedly affected consumer behavior. Our research seeks to find what effect the time of availability and the social influence of deals on an e-commerce website have on customers’ purchase intention. Participants were shown a webpage from a deals-based website that offers a product or service with varying levels of time of availability and social influence. Participants then completed an online survey to evaluate their purchase intention for the product or service. Analysis shows that limiting the time of availability and increasing the social influence of deals does not have any visible affect on customers’ purchase intention. Although the findings are insignificant, we believe that further research in the subject might reveal results that help businesses understand their customers and academics better understand new influences on purchase intention.