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Serv Bus (2013) 7:329346
DOI 10.1007/s11628-012-0162-x
Buraj Patrakosol Sang M. Lee
Received: 13 September 2011 / Accepted: 23 July 2012 / Published online: 7 August 2012 Springer-Verlag 2012
Abstract Delivering rich information is the key success factor for service business websites. Numerous studies have investigated useful guidelines to deliver rich information. The implicit assumption made by these studies is individual homogeneity. This study argues that this is only one side of the story, as individual heterogeneity is also important. Specically, this study questions relationships between personal dispositional factors and the persons perception of information richness. Dispositional factors of interest are age and personality. This study adopted information processing theory as its theoretical lens. A review of literature through the lens leads to the development of six hypotheses. The insurance industry provided the context of this study. Data were collected from 110 potential customers of 10 insurance organizations. The Hierarchical Linear Modeling technique was utilized for model building and hypotheses testing. The result revealed that aging individuals often nd information as low in richness. Furthermore, those with high consciousness and extraversion generally perceived information as higher in richness. Lastly, the other three dimensions of personality showed no association with information richness.
Keywords Service industry Information richness Information processing theory
Personality
B. Patrakosol
Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10300, Thailand e-mail: [email protected]
S. M. Lee (&)
Department of Management, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Information richness on service business websites
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330 B. Patrakosol, S. M. Lee
1 Introduction
The Internet has transformed itself from a simple communication vehicle into the medium of global business. Service organizations around the world establish themselves on this virtual space using web addresses. The website has become a new vehicle for business value creation, primarily based on the capacity of the internet to deliver rich information to its users. Providing rich information through their websites is an essential part of successful service business. Balasubramanian et al. (2003) revealed that high quality information on business websites help their customers achieve higher satisfaction. Rich information on website helps a business effectively communicate about itself and its products and services to its customers.
Studies about information richness have primarily focused on delivery methods and their effectiveness....