Internet marketers should provide their customers with greater accessibility and comprehensiveness all at the customer's convenience - on-line marketers can achieve a competitive advantage and build strong customer relationships by providing products which allow both interaction and personalization (Adam and Westberg, 1998). For another example, a bookseller's site may use technology to collect a profile of a particular customer's reading interests. By comparing these preference with the profiles of other customers, booksellers can then make specific recommendations based on books by other customers with similar interests. The more information provided by the customer, the more accurate the recommendation is likely to be.
McKinsey & Co. (1996) and Cyberdialogue/findsvp suggest similar reasons for using the internet or purchasing online (Strauss and Frost, 1999). Convenience is of vital importance to consumers, and comes from having no travel requirements, no travel expenses and from the ease with which comparison is made possible. Comprehensiveness and richness of information is important, and that it is available for seven days/24 hours. Instant interaction with other sellers or buyers is important, too, within a secure shopping environment. The possible evaluative criteria discussed above are summarized in Table I.
Among others, Deighton (1999) speaks of customers not only using a computer and the internet as above (i.e. merely as a useful communication medium), but also of interacting with the computer in a social sense. His ideas are based on prior demonstrations of the importance of interactivity and socialability of web sites which have shown that people apply the same social rules and responses toward computers and other advanced media that they apply to other people. Hoffman and Novak (1996) suggest two types of consumer motivation driving people's reactions to a web site; goaldirected and experiential. This seems a very sensible concept, that not only explains the observations made by Deighton and other discussed above, but also offers insight into the type and range of evaluation criteria that might determine brand equity. These ideas are put forward for testing in the second research proposition:
P2. The determinant structure of cyber brand will be explained by goal-oriented and experiential motivations.