The effects of web site aesthetics and shopping task on consumer online purchasing behavior

This research-in-progress investigates the effects of website aesthetics and shopping task type on consumer attitude towards electronic shopping sites. The conceptualization of website aesthetics is based on the two-dimensional structure, namely, classical and expressive aesthetics, proposed by Lavie and Tractinsky (2004). The online shopping tasks are categorized as hedonic versus utilitarian shopping tasks. A pre-test was conducted for selection of utilitarian and hedonic products. Based on the results of the pre-test, a laboratory experiment was designed to capture the effects of website aesthetics on online consumer purchasing behavior across different shopping tasks.