Robinson College of Business Study Provides Insight On Successful Internet Sites for the Holiday Shopping Season

ATLANTA - The quality of a retailer's web site, or the perception of it by consumers, will be key to its financial success this holiday season, according to a new study by a professor in the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.

Dr. Naveen Donthu, professor of marketing and an Internet marketing specialist, and former doctoral student Boonghee Yoo, have released a study on shoppers' preferences in Internet sites. The two developed a scale to measure the perceived quality of those sites called SITEQUAL.

"I think sites that score high on this scale are likely to be winners," says Donthu. "Just as service quality is important in the traditional retail store, I'd argue site quality is important in Internet stores."

SITEQUAL consists of 20 items within nine unique dimensions which are used to evaluate the quality of Internet sites and examine how site quality affects visitors' online behavior, such as search patterns, site patronization and most important --- buying decisions.

Because they are about evenly distributed among the nine dimensions and no single factor is dominant, the 20 items can be combined and then averaged to form a composite measure. In all, 207 shopping mall sites were surveyed; producing SITEQUAL indexes ranging from 1.40-4.65 out of 5.00, with a mean index of 3.50.

"The overall SITEQUAL score for sites from which respondents had made purchases was 3.80, and the score for sites from which respondents had not made purchases was only 2.90," Donthu says. "Hence, respondents found the sites from which they purchased goods to be about 30 percent more attractive on our scale than the competing sites."

The nine dimensions used in the study include the following:
· Aesthetic design (site creativity, multimedia and color graphics)
· Competitive value (competitive pricing vs. retail stores or other sites)
· Ease of use (search capabilities)
· Clarity of ordering (including unambiguous pricing and fast delivery)
· Corporate and brand equity (site owner's name value, products, services)
· Security (of personal and financial information)
· Processing speed (of order and responsiveness to consumer's requests)
· Product Uniqueness (products or services hard to find elsewhere)
· Product quality assurance (consumer's self-assurance resulting from the online experience)

SITEQUAL should not be regarded as a final measure but a starting point toward a better measure says professor Donthu. "SITEQUAL is meant as an Internet site benchmarking tool," he says. "It's easy to administer and is adaptable to the dynamic, changing nature of the Internet."

For More Information, contact:
Naveen Donthu, 404/413-7662
ndonthu@gsu.edu