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ArticleCreating Effective OnlineCustomer ExperiencesAlexander Bleier,Colleen M.Harmeling,and Robert W.PalmatierAbstractCreating effective online customer experiences through well-designed product web pages is critical to success in online retailing.How such web pages should look specifically,however,remains unclear.Previous work has only addressed a few online designelements in isolation,without accounting for the potential needto adjust experiences to reflect the characteristics ofthe productsor brands being sold.Across 16 experiments,this research investigates how 13 unique design elements shape four dimensions ofthe online customer experience(informativeness,entertainment,social presence,and sensory appeal)and thus influence pur-chase.Product(search vs.experience)and brand(trustworthiness)characteristics exacerbate or mitigate the uncertaintyinherent in online shopping,such that they moderate the influence of each experience dimension on purchases.A field experimentthat manipulates real product pages on A affirms these findings.The results thus provide managers with clear strategicguidance on how to build effective web pages.Keywordsonline customer experience,online design elements,online retailing,Taguchi design,web designOnline supplement:https:/dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022242918809930With more than 350 million products listed on Aalone(360pi 2016),success in the increasingly competitiveonline domain depends on sellers ability to orchestrate verbaland visual stimuli(i.e.,design elements)on product web pagesto effectively convert page visitors into buyers(Schlosser et al.2006).Insights into which design elements make for effectiveproduct web pages are however still largely based on manag-ers intuitions or,at best,ad hoc A/B testing.Academicresearch typically focuses on a single design element or justa few across a limited number of products or brands.It alsooften neglects the mechanisms through which design elementsaffect purchase or employs theoretical perspectives(e.g.,infor-mation processing)that conceptually limit their effects a priorito a single function(e.g.,information transmission).Yet eachencounter with a product web pagethe virtual space thatpresents a product and illustrates its value to the customerevokes a multidimensional experience that goes beyond a pureconveyance of factual information(Brakus,Schmitt,and Zar-antonello 2009;Lemon and Verhoef 2016).The objective ofthis research is therefore to understand how online design ele-ments shape multidimensional customer experiences to influ-ence purchase and how these experiences should be customizeddepending on the products or brands sold.The online customer experience at the heart of this researchcomprises a customers subjective,multidimensional psycho-logical response to a products presentation online.We arguethat this experience goes beyond cognitive(informativeness)and affective(entertainment)dimensions typically conceptua-lized in extant research(Novak,Hoffman,and Yung 2000)andalso includes social(social presence;Wang et al.2007)andsensory(sensory appeal;Jiang and Benbasat 2007a)dimen-sions.Furthermore,we identify 13 web page design elements,such as product descriptions,photos,and comparison matrices,that each may help shape the online experience and are ubiqui-tous in a wide range of industries and web page formats.Thismultidimensional framework more closely resembles the con-ceptualization of offline experiences(Brakus,Schmitt,andZarantonello 2009;Lemon and Verhoef 2016)and helps moreaccurately capture the mechanisms by which design elementsaffect product purchase.How effectively each experience dimension elicits pur-chases,however,may vary depending on characteristics of theoffered products and brands that exacerbate or alleviate theuncertainty inherent in online shopping(Bart et al.2005;Schlosser et al.2006).First,the degree to which consumersAlexander Bleier is Assistant Professor of Marketing,Frankfurt School ofFinance&Management(email:a.bleierfs.de).Colleen M.Harmeling isAssistant Professor of Marketing,Florida State University(email:charmelingbusiness.fsu.edu).Robert W.Palmatier is Professor ofMarketing,John C.Narver Chair of Business Administration,University ofWashington(email:palmatrwuw.edu).Journal of Marketing2019,Vol.83(2)98-119American Marketing Association 2018Article reuse guidelines: a productsolely on the basis of factual information(search qualities)rather than needing direct physical experi-ence(experience qualities)implies the level of uncertaintyassociated with assessing that product online(Hong and Pavlou2014).Second,customers may also be uncertain about theaccuracy and truthfulness of sellers product presentations,yeta brands trustworthiness may alleviate this uncertainty(Pavlou,Liang,and Xue 2007).We leverage our multidimen-sional online framework of the online customer experience toinvestigate how these two primary sources of uncertainty deter-mine the effects of each experience dimension on purchase(Dimoka,Hong,and
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