the self-report questionnaire that faithfully reflects the emotional factors related to electronic commerce systems. The second study focused on determining the important graphic design factors from the customer’s perspective. The causal relations between the emotional factors and design factors were established in the third study, and verified in the final study. Results indicate that it is possible to manipulate the graphic design factors of the customer interface in order to induce a target emotion, such as trustworthiness. These results have important implication for the design and implementation of emotionally usable electronic commerce systems. Discussion The design of customer interfaces that provide a pleasant shopping environment is an important research issue in electronic commerce. This paper proposed a research framework of the customer interface for cyber shopping malls. The framework consists of four dimensions: content design, structure design, navigation design, and graphic design. Each dimension was explained together with a description of a study conducted by the author. These studies are merely a starting point in the research regarding customer interface, and further studies are needed to test and extend the framework. Two pre-conditions must be met for more research in the customer interface. First, an experimental test bed must be constructed in the form of a cyber shopping mall that provides a mechanism for manipulating the four dimensions easily and for tracking customers’ behavior faithfully. Second, a channel for inter-disciplinary collaboration among researchers with different academic backgrounds must be provided. The relevant areas include marketing, consumer behavior, human factors and human computer interaction.
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