Innovativeness and Involvement as Determinants of Website Loyalty: I. A test of the style/involvement model in the context of Internet buying

Abstract

This paper is the first of the series of studies entitled “Innovativeness and Involvement as Determinants of Website Loyalty”, which was designed to test Foxall's [1995. Cognitive styles of consumer initiators. Technovation 15(5), 269–288] style/involvement model in the context of Internet buyer behaviours. The study was built on 1044 Taiwan Internet buyers randomly selected from a well-known brand's Website in the printer market. Foxall (1995) proposed that consumer choice is shaped by adaptive–innovative cognitive style [Kirton, 1976. Adaptors and innovators—a description and measure. Journal of Applied Psychology 61(5), 622–629] and product-domain involvement [Zaichkowsky, 1985. Measuring the involvement construct. Journal of Consumer Research 12(3), 341–352]. Aiming to provide more theoretical insights of the style/involvement model, Goldsmith and Hofacker's [1991. Measuring consumer innovativeness. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 19(3), 209–221] Domain Specific Innovativeness (DSI) scale and Mittal's [1989. Measuring purchase-decision involvement. Psychology and Marketing 6(2), 147–162] Purchase Decision Involvement (PDI) scale were used in order to examine Foxall's model in a more domain specific context in contrast to the more abstract measurements previously employed. The sample was divided into four consumer segments according to their DSI and PDI scores. Findings revealed that these four segments differed significantly in their brand loyalty in the traditional market, perceived risk when buying at the brand's Website, attitudinal loyalty to the brand's Website, and behavioural loyalty to the brand's Website (actual buying frequency at the brand's Website). Discussions of how consumers’ cognitive style and involvement level interact with each other and impact on their decision-making process underlying the tendency to brand loyalty, perceived risk and Website loyalty were presented.