Showing papers in "Information Systems Research in 2013"

Introduction to the Special Issue—Social Media and Business Transformation: A Framework for Research

Abstract: Social media are fundamentally changing the way we communicate, collaborate, consume, and create. They represent one of the most transformative impacts of information technology on business, both within and outside firm boundaries. This special issue was designed to stimulate innovative investigations of the relationship between social media and business transformation. In this paper we outline a broad research agenda for understanding the relationships among social media, business, and society. We place the papers comprising the special issue within this research framework and identify areas where further research is needed. We hope that the flexible framework we outline will help guide future research and develop a cumulative research tradition in this area.

Research Commentary---Too Big to Fail: Large Samples and the p-Value Problem

Abstract: The Internet has provided IS researchers with the opportunity to conduct studies with extremely large samples, frequently well over 10,000 observations. There are many advantages to large samples, but researchers using statistical inference must be aware of the p-value problem associated with them. In very large samples, p-values go quickly to zero, and solely relying on p-values can lead the researcher to claim support for results of no practical significance. In a survey of large sample IS research, we found that a significant number of papers rely on a low p-value and the sign of a regression coefficient alone to support their hypotheses. This research commentary recommends a series of actions the researcher can take to mitigate the p-value problem in large samples and illustrates them with an example of over 300,000 camera sales on eBay. We believe that addressing the p-value problem will increase the credibility of large sample IS research as well as provide more insights for readers.

Social Media Brand Community and Consumer Behavior: Quantifying the Relative Impact of User- and Marketer-Generated Content

Abstract: Despite the popular use of social media by consumers and marketers, empirical research investigating their economic values still lags. In this study, we integrate qualitative user-marketer interaction content data from a fan page brand community on Facebook and consumer transactions data to assemble a unique data set at the individual consumer level. We then quantify the impact of community contents from consumers (user-generated content, i.e., UGC) and marketers (marketer-generated content, i.e., MGC) on consumers' apparel purchase expenditures. A content analysis method was used to construct measures to capture the informative and persuasive nature of UGC and MGC while distinguishing between directed and undirected communication modes in the brand community. In our empirical analysis, we exploit differences across consumers' fan page joining decision and across timing differences in fan page joining dates for our model estimation and identification strategies. Importantly, we also control for potential ...

An Empirical Examination of the Antecedents and Consequences of Contribution Patterns in Crowd-Funded Markets

Abstract: Crowd-funded markets have recently emerged as a novel source of capital for entrepreneurs. As the economic potential of these markets is now being realized, they are beginning to go mainstream, a trend reflected by the explicit attention crowdfunding has received in the American Jobs Act as a potential avenue for economic growth, as well as the recent focus that regulators such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have placed upon it. Although the formulation of regulation and policy surrounding crowd-funded markets is becoming increasingly important, the behavior of crowdfunders, an important aspect that must be considered in this formulation effort, is not yet well understood. A key factor that can influence the behavior of crowd funders is information on prior contribution behavior, including the amount and timing of others' contributions, which is published for general consumption. With that in mind, in this study, we empirically examine social influence in a crowd-funded marketplace for onl...

Social Media and Firm Equity Value

Abstract: Companies have increasingly advocated social media technologies to transform businesses and improve organizational performance. This study scrutinizes the predictive relationships between social media and firm equity value, the relative effects of social media metrics compared with conventional online behavioral metrics, and the dynamics of these relationships. The results derived from vector autoregressive models suggest that social media-based metrics Web blogs and consumer ratings are significant leading indicators of firm equity value. Interestingly, conventional online behavioral metrics Google searches and Web traffic are found to have a significant yet substantially weaker predictive relationship with firm equity value than social media metrics. We also find that social media has a faster predictive value, i.e., shorter “wear-in” time, than conventional online media. These findings are robust to a consistent set of volume-based measures total blog posts, rating volume, total page views, and search intensity. Collectively, this study proffers new insights for senior executives with respect to firm equity valuations and the transformative power of social media.

The Effect of Customers' Social Media Participation on Customer Visit Frequency and Profitability: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract: In this study we examine the effect of customers' participation in a firm's social media efforts on the intensity of the relationship between the firm and its customers as captured by customers' visit frequency. We further hypothesize and test for the moderating roles of social media activity and customer characteristics on the link between social media participation and the intensity of customer-firm relationship. Importantly, we also quantify the impact of social media participation on customer profitability. We assemble a novel data set that combines customers' social media participation data with individual customer level transaction data. To account for endogeneity that could arise because of customer self-selection, we utilize the propensity score matching technique in combination with difference in differences analysis. Our results suggest that customer participation in a firm's social media efforts leads to an increase in the frequency of customer visits. We find that this participation effect is ...

How Is the Mobile Internet Different? Search Costs and Local Activities

Abstract: We explore how Internet browsing behavior varies between mobile phones and personal computers. Smaller screen sizes on mobile phones increase the cost to the user of browsing for information. In addition, a wider range of offline locations for mobile Internet usage suggests that local activities are particularly important. Using data on user behavior at a (Twitter-like) microblogging service, we exploit exogenous variation in the ranking mechanism of posts to identify the ranking effects. We show that (1) ranking effects are higher on mobile phones suggesting higher search costs: links that appear at the top of the screen are especially likely to be clicked on mobile phones and (2) the benefit of browsing for geographically close matches is higher on mobile phones: stores located in close proximity to a user's home are much more likely to be clicked on mobile phones. Thus, the mobile Internet is somewhat less “Internet-like”: search costs are higher and distance matters more. We speculate on how these cha...

From Use to Effective Use: A Representation Theory Perspective

Abstract: Information systems must be used effectively to obtain maximum benefits from them. However, despite a great deal of research on when and why systems are used, very little research has examined what effective system use involves and what drives it. To move from use to effective use requires understanding an information system's nature and purpose, which in turn requires a theory of information systems. We draw on representation theory, which states that an information system is made up of several structures that serve to represent some part of the world that a user and other stakeholders must understand. From this theory, we derive a high-level framework of how effective use and performance evolve, as well as specific models of the nature and drivers of effective use. The models are designed to explain the effective use of any information system and offer unique insights that would not be offered by traditional views, which tend to consider information systems to be just another tool. We explain how our theory extends existing research, provides a rich platform for research on effective use, and how it contributes back to the theory of information systems from which it was derived.

Information Technology Competencies, Organizational Agility, and Firm Performance: Enabling and Facilitating Roles

Abstract: The hypercompetitive aspects of modern business environments have drawn organizational attention toward agility as a strategic capability. Information technologies are expected to be an important competency in the development of organizational agility. This research proposes two distinct roles to understand how information technology competencies shape organizational agility and firm performance. In their enabling role, IT competencies are expected to directly enhance entrepreneurial and adaptive organizational agility. In their facilitating role, IT competencies should enhance firm performance by helping the implementation of requisite entrepreneurial and adaptive actions. Furthermore, we argue that the effects of the dual roles of IT competencies are moderated by multiple contingencies arising from environmental dynamism and other sources. We test our model and hypotheses through a latent class regression analysis on data from a sample of 109 business-to-business electronic marketplaces. The results provide support for the enabling and facilitating roles of IT competencies. Moreover, we find that these dual effects vary according to environmental dynamism. The results suggest that managers should account for multiple contingencies observed and unobserved while assessing the effects of IT competencies on organizational agility and firm performance.

Research Note—Privacy Concerns and Privacy-Protective Behavior in Synchronous Online Social Interactions

Abstract: Privacy is of prime importance to many individuals when they attempt to develop online social relationships. Nonetheless, it has been observed that individuals’ behavior is at times inconsistent with their privacy concerns, e.g., they disclose substantial private information in synchronous online social interactions, even though they are aware of the risks involved. Drawing on the hyperpersonal framework and the privacy calculus perspective, this paper elucidates the interesting roles of privacy concerns and social rewards in synchronous online social interactions by examining the causes and the behavioral strategies that individuals utilize to protect their privacy. An empirical study involving 251 respondents was conducted in online chat rooms. Our results indicate that individuals utilize both self-disclosure and misrepresentation to protect their privacy and that social rewards help explain why individuals may not behave in accordance with their privacy concerns. In addition, we find that perceived anonymity of others and perceived intrusiveness affect both privacy concerns and social rewards. Our findings also suggest that higher perceived anonymity of self decreases individuals’ privacy concerns, and higher perceived media richness increases social rewards. Generally, this study contributes to the information systems literature by integrating the hyperpersonal framework and the privacy calculus perspective to identify antecedents of privacy trade-off and predict individuals’ behavior in synchronous online social interactions.

Motivational Differences Across Post-Acceptance Information System Usage Behaviors: An Investigation in the Business Intelligence Systems Context

Abstract: We identify two post-acceptance information system (IS) usage behaviors related to how employees leverage implemented systems. Routine use (RTN) refers to employees' using IS in a routine and standardized manner to support their work, and innovative use (INV) describes employees' discovering new ways to use IS to support their work. We use motivation theory as the overarching perspective to explain RTN and INV and appropriate the rich intrinsic motivation (RIM) concept from social psychology to propose a conceptualization of RIM toward IS use, which includes intrinsic motivation toward accomplishment (IMap), intrinsic motivation to know (IMkw), and intrinsic motivation to experience stimulation (IMst). We also consider the influence of perceived usefulness (PU)—a representative surrogate construct of extrinsic motivation toward IS use—on RTN and INV. We theorize the relative impacts of the RIM constructs and PU on RTN and INV and the role of personal innovativeness with IT (PIIT) in moderating the RIM con...

Social Network Effects on Productivity and Job Security: Evidence from the Adoption of a Social Networking Tool

Abstract: By studying the change in employees' network positions before and after the introduction of a social networking tool, I find that information-rich networks (low in cohesion and rich in structural holes), enabled by social media, have a positive effect on various work outcomes. Contrary to the notion that network positions are difficult to alter, I show that social media can induce a change in network structure, one from which individuals can derive economic benefits. In addition, I consider two intermediate mechanisms by which an information-rich network is theorized to improve work performance—information diversity and social communication—and quantify their effects on productivity and job security. Analysis shows that productivity, as measured by billable revenue, is more associated with information diversity than with social communication. However, the opposite is true for job security. Social communication is more correlated with reduced layoff risks than with information diversity. This, in turn, sug...

Promotional Marketing or Word-of-Mouth? Evidence from Online Restaurant Reviews

Abstract: The value of promotional marketing and word-of-mouth (WOM) is well recognized, but few studies have compared the effects of these two types of information in online settings. This research examines the effect of marketing efforts and online WOM on product sales by measuring the effects of online coupons, sponsored keyword search, and online reviews. It aims to understand the relationship between firms' promotional marketing and WOM in the context of a third party review platform. Using a three-year panel data set from one of the biggest restaurant review websites in China, the study finds that both online promotional marketing and reviews have a significant impact on product sales, which suggests promotional marketing on third party review platforms is still an effective marketing tool. This research further explores the interaction effects between WOM and promotional marketing when these two types of information coexist. The results demonstrate a substitute relationship between the WOM volume and coupon ...

The Effects of Rewarding User Engagement: The Case of Facebook Apps

Abstract: We study the market for apps on Facebook, the dominant social networking platform, and make use of a rule change by Facebook by which highly engaging apps were rewarded with further opportunities to engage users. The rule change led to new applications with significantly higher user ratings being developed. Moreover, user ratings became more important drivers of app success. Other drivers of app success are also affected by the rule change; sheer network size became a less important driver for app success, update frequency benefitted apps more in staying successful, and active users of Facebook apps declined less rapidly with age. Our results show that social media channels do not necessarily have to be managed through hard exclusion of participants but can also be steered through “softer” changes in reward and incentive systems.

Do Recommender Systems Manipulate Consumer Preferences? A Study of Anchoring Effects

Abstract: Recommender systems are becoming a salient part of many e-commerce websites. Much research has focused on advancing recommendation technologies to improve accuracy of predictions, although behavioral aspects of using recommender systems are often overlooked. In our studies, we explore how consumer preferences at the time of consumption are impacted by predictions generated by recommender systems. We conducted three controlled laboratory experiments to explore the effects of system recommendations on preferences. Studies 1 and 2 investigated user preferences for television programs across a variety of conditions, which were surveyed immediately following program viewing. Study 3 investigated the granularity of the observed effects within individual participants. Results provide strong evidence that the rating presented by a recommender system serves as an anchor for the consumer's constructed preference. Viewers' preference ratings are malleable and can be significantly influenced by the recommendation received. The effect is sensitive to the perceived reliability of a recommender system and, thus, not a purely numerical or priming-based effect. Finally, the effect of anchoring is continuous and linear, operating over a range of perturbations of the system. These general findings have a number of important implications e.g., on recommender systems performance metrics and design, preference bias, potential strategic behavior, and trust, which are discussed.

Social Ties and User Content Generation: Evidence from Flickr

Abstract: The content created by the users of social networking sites has reached such high levels of quality and variety that it is comparable to that produced by professional agencies. Therefore, understanding what types of content users generate and the underlying motivational factors is vital to the success of the sites. The extant research on content generation has primarily focused on the amount of content and on how to encourage participation in content creation, and less attention has been paid to the content itself and how social relations affect the types of content that users upload. This study aims to empirically document the relationship between social ties and the similarities between the types of content that people create online. We collected a large data set from the photo-hosting website Flickr detailing the users' social relations over time in conjunction with their photo-uploading behavior. We found that around the time of the formation of a social tie, members of dyads began to upload more simi...

Digital Divide Initiative Success in Developing Countries: A Longitudinal Field Study in a Village in India

Abstract: Digital divide initiatives in developing countries are an important avenue for the socioeconomic advancement of those countries Yet little research has focused on understanding the success of such initiatives We develop a model of technology use and economic outcomes of digital divide initiatives in developing countries We use social networks as the guiding theoretical lens because it is well suited to this context, given the low literacy, high poverty, high collectivism, and an oral tradition of information dissemination in developing countries We test our model with longitudinal data gathered from 210 families in a rural village in India in the context of a digital divide initiative As theorized, we found that the social network constructs contributed significantly to the explanation of technology use (R2 = 039) Also as we predicted, technology use partially mediated the effect of social network constructs on economic outcomes (R2 = 047) We discuss implications for theory and practice

The Effects of Diversity in Global, Distributed Collectives: A Study of Open Source Project Success

Abstract: Diversity is a defining characteristic of global collectives facilitated by the Internet. Though substantial evidence suggests that diversity has profound implications for a variety of outcomes including performance, member engagement, and withdrawal behavior, the effects of diversity have been predominantly investigated in the context of organizational workgroups or virtual teams. We use a diversity lens to study the success of nontraditional virtual work groups exemplified by open source software (OSS) projects. Building on the diversity literature, we propose that three types of diversity (separation, variety, and disparity) influence two critical outcomes for OSS projects: community engagement and market success. We draw on the OSS literature to further suggest that the effects of diversity on market success are moderated by the application development stage. We instantiate the operational definitions of three forms of diversity to the unique context of open source projects. Using archival data from 3...

Predicting Adoption Probabilities in Social Networks

Abstract: In a social network, adoption probability refers to the probability that a social entity will adopt a product, service, or opinion in the foreseeable future. Such probabilities are central to fundamental issues in social network analysis, including the influence maximization problem. In practice, adoption probabilities have significant implications for applications ranging from social network-based target marketing to political campaigns, yet predicting adoption probabilities has not received sufficient research attention. Building on relevant social network theories, we identify and operationalize key factors that affect adoption decisions: social influence, structural equivalence, entity similarity, and confounding factors. We then develop the locally weighted expectation-maximization method for Naive Bayesian learning to predict adoption probabilities on the basis of these factors. The principal challenge addressed in this study is how to predict adoption probabilities in the presence of confounding fa...

Active Social Media Management: The Case of Health Care

Abstract: Given the demand for authentic personal interactions over social media, it is unclear how much firms should actively manage their social media presence We study this question empirically in a health care setting We show that active social media management drives more user-generated content However, we find that this is due to an incremental increase in user postings from an organization's employees rather than from its clients This result holds when we explore exogenous variation in social media policies, employees, and clients that are explained by medical marketing laws, medical malpractice laws, and distortions in Medicare incentives Further examination suggests that content being generated mainly by employees can be avoided if a firm's postings are entirely client focused However, most firm postings seem not to be specifically targeted to clients' interests, instead highlighting more general observations or achievements of the firm itself We show that untargeted postings like these provoke acti

Ensuring Employees' IT Compliance: Carrot or Stick?

Abstract: With reward (carrot) and punishment (stick) widely applied by organizations to regulate mandatory IT usage, it is imperative to understand how these incentives influence employee compliance behavior. Drawing upon control theory and regulatory focus theory, this study investigates the relationships among regulatory focus, reward, punishment, and compliance behavior in mandatory IT settings. Survey data were collected from 186 employees in companies where enterprise resource planning (ERP) compliance was mandated. Analyses reveal that punishment expectancy is a strong determinant of compliance behavior, whereas the main effect of reward expectancy is not significant. Moreover, the relationship between reward expectancy and compliance behavior is moderated by promotion focus and the relationship between punishment expectancy and compliance behavior is moderated by prevention focus. This study provides an in-depth understanding of reward and punishment in mandatory IT settings and suggests that regulatory foc...

The Association Between the Disclosure and the Realization of Information Security Risk Factors

Abstract: Firms often disclose information security risk factors in public filings such as 10-K reports. The internal information associated with disclosures may be positive or negative. In this paper, we evaluate how the nature of the disclosed security risk factors, believed to represent the firm's internal information regarding information security, is associated with future breach announcements reported in the media. For this purpose, we build a decision tree model, which classifies the occurrence of future security breaches based on the textual contents of the disclosed security risk factors. The model is able to accurately associate disclosure characteristics with breach announcements about 77% of the time. We further explore the contents of the security risk factors using text-mining techniques to provide a richer interpretation of the results. The results show that the disclosed security risk factors with risk-mitigation themes are less likely to be related to future breach announcements. We also investigat...

When Social Media Can Be Bad for You: Community Feedback Stifles Consumer Creativity and Reduces Satisfaction with Self-Designed Products

Abstract: Enabling consumers to self-design unique products that match their idiosyncratic preferences is the key value driver of modern mass customization systems. These systems are increasingly becoming “social,” allowing for consumer-to-consumer interactions such as commenting on each other's self-designed products. The present research examines how receiving others' feedback on initial product configurations affects consumers' ultimate product designs and their satisfaction with these self-designed products. Evidence from a field study in a European car manufacturer's brand community and from two follow-up experiments reveals that receiving feedback from other community members on initial self-designs leads to less unique final self-designs, lower satisfaction with self-designed products, lower product usage frequency, and lower monetary product valuations. We provide evidence that the negative influence of feedback on consumers' satisfaction with self-designed products is mediated by an increase in decision un...

Engineering Optimal Network Effects via Social Media Features and Seeding in Markets for Digital Goods and Services

Abstract: Firms nowadays are increasingly proactive in trying to strategically capitalize on consumer networks and social interactions. In this paper, we complement an emerging body of research on the engineering of word-of-mouth effects by exploring a different angle through which firms can strategically exploit the value-generation potential of the user network. Namely, we consider how software firms should optimize the strength of network effects at utility level by adjusting the level of embedded social media features in tandem with the right market seeding and pricing strategies in the presence of seeding disutility. We explore two opposing seeding cost models where seeding-induced disutility can be either positively or negatively correlated with customer type. We consider both complete and incomplete information scenarios for the firm. Under complete information, we uncover a complementarity relationship between seeding and building social media features that holds for both disutility models. When the cost of any of these actions increases, rather than compensating by a stronger action on the other dimension to restore the overall level of network effects, the firm will actually scale back on the other initiative as well. Under incomplete information, this complementarity holds when seeding disutility is negatively correlated with customer type but may not always hold in the other disutility model, potentially leading to fundamentally different optimal strategies. We also discuss how our insights apply to asymmetric networks.

Research Note---Business Value of Information Technology: Testing the Interaction Effect of IT and R&D on Tobin's Q

Abstract: The business case for investing in information technology IT has received increasing scrutiny in recent years. We propose that IT investments create additional business value through interactions with other business processes. In this paper, we formalize the interaction effect of IT by focusing on one core function, namely, research and development R&D. We hypothesize that investments in IT can interact with and complement a firm's R&D investments, enhancing the firm's shareholder value creation potential. We test this by hypothesis by estimating the interaction impact of IT and R&D investments on Tobin's q, a forward-looking measure of firm performance using a recent multiyear, firm-level, archival data set. Our results suggest that the interaction effect of R&D and IT on Tobin's q is positive and significant after controlling for other firm-and industry-specific effects. Our findings provide rigorous empirical support for recent anecdotal evidence in the managerial literature with respect to the manner in which IT is enabling R&D-intensive innovation processes. Our analysis underscores the need for coordinated investments in IT and R&D, and permeating IT capabilities throughout other business processes such as R&D.

Research Note---Continued Participation in Online Innovation Communities: Does Community Response Matter Equally for Everyone?

Abstract: In this study, we focus on the factors that influence online innovation community members' continued participation in the context of open source software development OSSD communities Prior research on continued participation in online communities has primarily focused on social interactions among members and benefits obtained from these interactions However, members of these communities often play different roles, which have been examined extensively, albeit in a separate stream of research This study attempts to bridge these two streams of research by investigating the joint influence of community response and members' roles on continued participation We categorize OSSD community members into users and modifiers and empirically examine the differential effects of community response across these roles By analyzing a longitudinal data set of activities in the discussion forums of more than 300 OSSD projects, we not only confirm the positive influence of community response on members' continued participation but also find that community response is more influential in driving the continuance behavior of users than that of modifiers In addition, this research highlights the importance of modifiers, a key subgroup of OSSD participants that has been largely overlooked by prior research

Research Commentary---Information in Digital, Economic, and Social Networks

Abstract: Digital technologies have made networks ubiquitous. A growing body of research is examining these networks to gain a better understanding of how firms interact with their consumers, how people interact with each other, and how current and future digital artifacts will continue to alter business and society. The increasing availability of massive networked data has led to several streams of inquiry across fields as diverse as computer science, economics, information systems, marketing, physics, and sociology. Each of these research streams asks questions that at their core involve “information in networks”---its distribution, its diffusion, its inferential value, and its influence on social and economic outcomes. We suggest a broad direction for research into social and economic networks. Our analysis describes four kinds of investigation that seem most promising. The first studies how information technologies create and reveal networks whose connections represent social and economic relationships. The second examines the content that flows through networks and its economic, social, and organizational implications. A third develops theories and methods to understand and utilize the rich predictive information contained in networked data. A final area of inquiry focuses on network dynamics and how information technology affects network evolution. We conclude by discussing several important cross-cutting issues with implications for all four research streams, which must be addressed if the ensuing research is to be both rigorous and relevant. We also describe how these directions of inquiry are interconnected: results and ideas will pollinate across them, leading to a new cumulative research tradition.

Research Note---An Investigation of the Appropriation of Technology-Mediated Training Methods Incorporating Enactive and Collaborative Learning

Abstract: The growth in the application of information technology to student and employee learning underscores the need to understand the impact of technology-mediated learning TML methods. Using previous developed TML models, based on social cognitive theory and adaptive structuration meta-theory, the effectiveness of three training methods were examined in this study: technology mediated using both vicarious and enactive learning, and collaborative and combined collaborative plus technology mediated. The study also focused on the learning process. The experimental study results showed a significant positive influence of enactive learning enabled TML and collaborative training on specific training outcomes, and the combined training method shows positive results on all training outcomes. The study results also showed that faithful appropriation of the training methods during the learning process has a moderator effect on training outcomes. The study provides important research implications for theory and practice.

Information Valuation and Confirmation Bias in Virtual Communities: Evidence from Stock Message Boards

Abstract: Virtual communities continue to play a greater role in social, political, and economic interactions. However, how users value information from these communities and how that affects their behavior and future expectations is not fully understood. Stock message boards provide an excellent setting to analyze these issues given the large user base and market uncertainty. Using data from 502 investor responses from a field experiment on one of the largest message board operators in South Korea, our analyses revealed that investors exhibit confirmation bias, whereby they preferentially treat messages that support their prior beliefs. This behavior is more pronounced for investors with higher perceived knowledge about the market and higher strength of belief i.e., sentiment toward a particular stock. We also find a negative interaction effect between the perceived knowledge and the strength of prior belief on confirmation bias. Those exhibiting confirmation bias are also more overconfident; as a result, they trade more actively and expect higher market returns than is warranted. Collectively, these results suggest that participation in virtual communities may not necessarily lead to superior financial returns.

Breaking the Ice in B2C Relationships: Understanding Pre-Adoption E-Commerce Attraction

Abstract: This research proposes that the forming of a business-to-consumer (B2C) customer relationship is part of a multiphased technology adoption process where attraction is the first step in this sequence. A conceptual model, called the electronic commerce (e-commerce) attraction model (eCAM), offers a theoretical foundation for guiding two empirical studies (N = 345 and N = 240, respectively) investigating how initial customer perceptions of a website influence attraction toward this website. The results support the eCAM as a new theoretical lens for understanding electronic commerce-based attraction. Comparisons are made between the proposed eCAM and previously established adoption models (i.e., the Technology Acceptance Model and WebQual) as well as the discriminant validity of the constructs in these models. Results demonstrate that the eCAM provides additional insights for understanding how website design influences e-commerce attraction and adoption. The implications of these results for future research a...