Consumer perceptions on web advertisements and motivation factors to purchase in the online shopping

The principal objective of this study was to investigate the mediating and moderating effects of product involvement and trust toward websites in relation to the effects of the attributes of web advertisements on customers' purchase intentions. We collected data consisting of a total of 264 responses from individuals with previous experience with purchasing products from online shopping mall sites, and utilized the PLS (partial least squares) method to analyze the collected data. Our findings demonstrated that consumers with greater product involvement tended to shop in shopping malls, where they could obtain more information on products, and that consumers with low product involvement tended to be more willing to consider entertainment. Additionally, consumers with higher levels of trust toward websites tended to be influenced by perceived entertainment and thus stay longer at shopping sites; conversely, consumers with low levels of trust toward websites tended to be more willing to consider perceived informativeness as minimizing environmental uncertainty. On the basis of our results, online shopping malls must stress the intrinsic attributes of products to attract highly-involved consumers and must present a benevolent corporate image for consumers concerned with better service. Our results also demonstrated that, for less-involved consumers who wish to search for products to present, it may be appropriate to mix entertainment components with product information, and also to implement creative web interface designs for more effective browsing.