Social E-Atmospherics in Practice (or Not): A French and Turkish Web Designers' Perspectives

Abstract

Little is known about the development of social e-atmospherics. And yet, e-atmospherics have motivated an emerging body of research which reports that both better layouts and 'recognized' atmospherics encourage consumers to modify their shopping habits. While the literature has analyzed mainly the functional (design) aspect of e-atmospherics, little has been done in terms of linking its characteristics to social (co-) creation. This paper attempts to redress the imbalance by exploring the anatomy from a website designer perspective of the social dimension of design in relation to e-atmospherics, which includes factors such as the aesthetic design of space and the influence of visual cues as a socially constructed meaning. We identify the challenges that web designers as social agents, who interact within intangible social reference sets, restricted by social standards, value, beliefs, status and duties, face daily within their work. We aim to review the current understanding of the importance and voluntary integration of social cues displayed by web designers from a mature market and an emerging market, and provides an analysis based recommendation towards the development of an integrated e-social atmospheric framework. Results report exploratory findings from questionnaires with 10 French and 16 Turkish web designers. These allow us to re-interpret the web designers' reality regarding social e-atmospherics. We contend that by comprehending (before any consumer/client input) social capital, daily micro practices, habits and routine of designers, a deeper understanding of social e-atmospherics possible functions in the future will be unpacked.