CONSUMERS LEARN 40 PERCENT MORE ABOUT PRODUCTS IN VIRTUAL SITES THAN THEY DO IN REALITY, MSU RESEARCHERS FIND
EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Research results from Michigan State University's Media Interface and Network Design (M.I.N.D.) Lab show that adding 3-D products and virtual sales agents to e-commerce sites generates significantly better product knowledge and elevated purchase intent in consumers.
Experiential e-commerce is the name being given to this new wave of technology designed to make shopping online easier and more convenient.
"Virtual products can be taken apart and examined, and come with signs that explain how they work," said Frank Biocca, holder of the Ameritech Chair in Telecommunication Technologies and Information Services at MSU and director of the lab. "Real products are great, but they just sit there; they don't explain themselves."
The interactive features of a 3-D product make a big difference in consumer learning, Biocca added.
Various M.I.N.D. Lab research projects have identified vivid, involving, active and affective psychological states that exist in humans who are interacting with 3-D computer simulations.
"Virtual experience outperforms indirect experience in every aspect of consumer learning and, in certain cases, even exceeds direct experience," said Hairong Li, assistant professor of advertising at MSU and a principal investigator on the project. "Our research found that consumers' product knowledge is 40 percent better after interacting with 3-D products than it is after inspecting real products.
"With companies like Lands' End and The Sharper Image finding that interactive 3-D presentation of their merchandise helps them keep customers interested and buying more, many online retailers are making the move to interactive 3-D graphics to show their products," Li said.
Experiential e-commerce and the M.I.N.D Lab research findings will be discussed at a conference set for Sept. 27-29 at Kellogg Center. More than 20 researchers from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Korea, the Netherlands and the United States will present their findings. Conference details can be found online at: http://networkedminds.org/e2/
Keynote speakers include Clifford Nass of Stanford University, who wrote the book "The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Televisions and the New Media Like Real People and Places;" Rick Robinson, a senior vice president at Sapient, a leading developer of e-commerce solutions; and Michael Kaplan of Adobe Systems.
"Findings at this conference may lay the theoretical foundations for many new applications in the next wave of e-commerce Web sites," Biocca said.
The M.I.N.D. Lab is dedicated to research on human-computer interaction and how telecommunication technology can augment human ability. Lab researchers subscribe to the principle that minds linked via intelligent virtual environments can work better than minds alone.
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contact:Russ WhiteUniversity RelationsMichigan State University517-432-0923[email protected]
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