Development and validation of a formative and a reflective measure for the assessment of online store usability

Abstract

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a reflective and a formative measure of online store usability. Perceived usability, related constructs (i.e. trust and aesthetics), controls (i.e. user and product characteristics) and consequences (i.e. intention to buy and purchase) were examined within a nomological network. Three hundred and seventy-eight participants completed an experimental study. Each participant visited 2 out of 35 online stores and rated the usability and intention to buy for both stores. Purchase behaviour was determined by combining the participants' reward with the decision to buy. Results from partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modelling indicate that the formative usability measure forms a valid set of items for the user-based assessment of online store usability and that both measures are positively related to the intention to buy, suggesting criterion validity. As hypothesised, positive relationships of usability with trust and aesthetics were supported. Furthermore, both measures provided a good prediction of the decision to buy, indicating overall predictive validity. Limitations and implications for usability measures and human-computer interaction research are discussed.

The Role of Usability in Business-to-Business E-Commerce Systems: Predictors and Its Impact on User's Strain and Commercial Transactions

“…These results are counter to studies that have found a high predictive validity of the usability on purchase in B2C systems [6,7,50]. Given these findings, we assume that contrary to B2C contexts, the use of B2B applications is mandatory and users do not have a decision to determinate the transaction (cf.…”

“…Recently, Christophersen and Konradt [50] presented and validated reflective and formative scales for the measurement of usability in B2C settings and called for replication to determine generalizability of these results. The present research extends findings by suggesting that the reflective measure shows excellent reliability, discriminant validity, and predictive validity and thus is suitable to quickly and concisely capture perceived usability of information systems in B2B settings.…”

“…In e-commerce information systems research, several subjective and objective success measures have been used including the conversion rate which describes the percentage of web-shop visitors that make a sale directly on the website [46], the intention to cancel an online transaction [47], the intention to buy [48,49], and the actual transactions, that is, purchases that are carried out [7,50,51]. Evidence indicates that usability has an impact on the intention to buy [49][50][51][52] and the actual purchase [7,50,51]. Despite the fact that the consumer's decision to buy (or actual purchase) is generally considered as a fundamental indicator of success almost all studies draw exclusively on questionnaire data on the intention to buy instead of assessing the actual purchase behavior.…”

“…While most measures broadly determine usability (see [60], for a review), the Usability Questionnaire for Online-Shops (UFOS; [49,50]) specifically addresses online shops and was systematically validated in the B2C sector, including web-based book and media-sellers [49], online shops for media, printer cartridges, concert tickets [50], and websites of health insurance companies [51]. Usability was measured with the reflective 8-item scale (Ufos v2r) from Christophersen and Konradt [50]. Sample items were "The handling of the [system] is easy to Advances in Human-Computer Interaction 5 learn" and "It is too complicated for me to use this store" (R).…”

“…Subjective server response time (SSRT) was measured by a single item taken from the formative usability scale of Christophersen and Konradt [50] "It takes too long for the store to react to my input" (R). Although singleitem measures are often regarded as inappropriate for multidimensional constructs, system usage is a concrete and completely clearcut construct (cf.…”