Assessing the impact of internet agent on end users' performance

The performance of recommender systems in online shopping: A user-centric study

“…pareto optimality) of the selected alternative(s), also referred to as an ''ideal selection'' (G Häubl & Trifts, 2000). Indeed, such conceptualization of decision quality has been used as a measure of decision performance (Hostler et al, 2005). Häubl and Murray (Gerald Häubl & Murray, 2005) showed that the use of RA increases decision quality by reducing the likelihood of selecting a nondominated alternative.…”

“…Larger amount of information increases the cognitive load (Sweller, Chandler, Tierney, & Cooper, 1990) imposed on a consumer searching for a product and can result in them spending more time analyzing available alternatives. Thus, higher level of effort necessitates more time to accomplish a given task (Hostler et al, 2005). Indeed, many studies use decision time as an indicator of decision effort (Hostler et al, 2005;McNee, Lam, Konstan, & Riedl, 2003;Olson & Widing, 2002).…”

“…For example, Pereira (Pereira, 2001) observed that query-based RAs improved both objective and subjective indicators of decision quality. Other studies (G Häubl & Trifts, 2000;Hostler, Yoon, & Guimaraes, 2005) demonstrated an assessment of decision quality through non-dominance (i.e. pareto optimality) of the selected alternative(s), also referred to as an ''ideal selection'' (G Häubl & Trifts, 2000).…”

“…To enable a direct comparison and to build directly on that study, similar indicators were also adopted in the study here, in the assessment of decision quality with respect to final consideration sets constructed. Many studies show that both utility (Hostler et al, 2005;Pereira, 2001) and share of non-dominated alternatives in the consideration set (Van der Heijden & Sørensen, 2002) are good indicators of choice quality in evaluation of recommendation agents.…”

“…Intuitively, preference relaxation mechanisms increase effort by relaxing rigid requirements, and therefore incorporating more alternatives for consideration by a user. Two other indicators directly influencing decision effort are the time taken to complete the task (Hostler et al, 2005) and the extent of product search (Moore & Punj, 2001). Decision effort is directly related to the amount of information that needs to be considered by a user (Eppler & Mengis, 2004;Turetken & Sharda, 2004) as a higher amount of relevant product information requires more information processing, which in turn demands more time.…”