Flow, enduring, and situational involvement in the Web environment: A tripartite second‐order examination

Abstract

Flow, a construct borrowed from reference disciplines, has been proposed as the central process in Web navigation. However, when flow is applied directly to the context of marketing, it suffers from conceptual ambiguity and overlap with the popular marketing construct, involvement. The present study aims to provide a clear framework within which to delineate the relationship between flow and involvement, and thus develop a better theoretical basis that incorporates the flow construct into Internet marketing. This study first distinguishes explicitly between flow, enduring involvement, and situational involvement. It then operationalizes these constructs with the use of customary measures to disclose their unique and common characteristics. Finally, a second-order confirmatory factor analysis allowing measurement errors is used to identify explicitly the tripartite relationship between the three constructs. The conceptual and operational implications are discussed.

Flow Experience in Cyberspace: Current Studies and Perspectives

“…Surveys are administered within particular populations, for example, the subscribers to a special group of online services, visitors of some website(s), learners of a certain software product (Ghani & Deshpande, 1994;Harvey, Loomis, & Bell, 1998;Konradt, Filip, & Hoffmann, 2003;Koufaris, 2002;Skadberg & Kimmel, 2004;Trevino & Webster, 1992;Webster, Trevino, & Ryan, 1993). This style of surveying can be called retrospective because it refers to a habitual behavior, related to the cyberspace, to a favorite type of web source, or to a known software product (Huang, 2006;Korzaan, 2003;Montgomery, Sharafi, & Heidman, 2004;Sharafi, Heidman, & Montgomery, 2006). Most often, the questionnaires measuring flow and nonflow parameters are administered in parallel to separate the flow characteristics from the more traditional behavior patterns.…”

“…Researchers are doing their best to find out certain dependencies between the flow characteristics, the behavioral and marketing parameters, and indicators of the computer/web-based skills to develop a hierarchy of the first-order and the higher-order dimensions in the field (Hoffman & Novak, 1996;Huang, 2006;Korzaan, 2003;Koufaris, 2002;Rettie, 2001;Siekpe, 2005 , 2004). This direction of research and practice seems to be accelerating, especially with the practice of e-shopping on the rise.…”

Fluxo online e e-satisfação em processos de compra de alto envolvimento

“…It is accompanied by the loss of self-consciousness and lack of reflection during the navigation into the website in which those are browsing. After Hoffman and Novak's work (1996), several other authors focused their studies on understanding the flow state experienced by consumers in e-commerce, among which are Chen et al (1999), Novak et al (2000Novak et al ( , 2003, Huang (2003Huang ( , 2006, Choi et al (2007), Novak (2009) andVan Noort et al (2011).…”

“…In her study, Huang (2006) argued that the flow state can be characterized by complete immersion of consumer in the online buying activity. This occurs when the consumer's attention is focused exclusively on the interaction with the website and his curiosity is stimulated.…”

“…They intend to visit the website with intention to make present and future purchases and adopt exploratory behavior while on the website (Van Noort et al, 2011;Novak, 2009, 1996;Huang, 2006;Richard and Chandra, 2005;Wu and Chang, 2005).…”