Online consumer motivation: Towards an understanding of a priori motivations in ecommerce interactions

This dissertation is broken into three essays that focus on how a priori motivation can play an important role in ecommerce outcomes. The first essay theoretically develops the online consumer motivation construct. Online consumer motivation provides a clearing house for how a user's individual characteristics and the task at hand will influence perceptions of technology presentation. Further, it is proposed that by offering a Web site interface that is congruent with the user's online consumer motivation, Web site utilization and task performance will improve. In addition to the conceptual model, several propositions predict the interplay of key constructs. The paper concludes with a prescriptive protocol for testing the proposed theory as well as for guiding the design of ecommerce Web sites.;The second essay focuses on conceptualizing and developing an instrument for online consumer motivation. Specifically, this essay identifies the important extant literature in both psychology and an information system then can be extended to provide grounds for online consumer motivation. The second essay uses two laboratory experiments to validate the scales used to measure online consumer motivations.;The third and final essay uses Task-Technology Fit theory to posit a temporal view of online consumer motivation (i.e., why a user has chosen to visit a particular Web site at a given time) that can inform Web site design. This includes one laboratory experiment and one survey study to provide: (1) empirical evidence if the existence of online consumer motivation, (2) the affect of online consumer motivation on ecommerce outcomes and (3) a future stream of research.;By first offering a theoretical development of online consumer motivation, followed by the instrument development and then the empirical instantiation, this dissertation hope to not only inform research but also provide guidance to ecommerce practitioners.