Evaluating Skills and Challenges as Antecedents of Compelling online Information-Seekeing Experiences
Evaluating Skills and Challenges as Antecedents of Compelling online Information-Seekeing Experiences

Summary/Abstract: In contemporary information societies, consumers are increasingly expected to be proficient users of online information to support and guide their buying decisions. Due to the world wide web and its availability on a wide range of connectable devices, information from infinite commercial and non-commercial sources can be instantly accessed and used. However, consumers’ level of self-efficacy in dealing with technology and the wide range of information content as well as the extent to which they feel cognitively challenged by the technological and content issues may significantly influence the intensity of their involvement with companies’ marketing information. Based on the online flow theory, describing total involvement experiences, as well as on recent developments of the information literacy construct, in the present paper we propose a research instrument for assessing two essential preconditions of optimal, highly engaging consumer online information-seeking experiences. We posit that consumers have compelling online search experiences when the level of both their technical and their cognitive skills match the informational challenges perceived in the online medium. Nevertheless, the following study represents only the first step in a complex scale development process and in building and testing the structural model describing causal relationships between flow constructs.

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