5. Conclusions and discussions
Based on the theory of information overload, this study examined whether consumers’ subjective states towards their buying decision would be worse while accessing abundant information in an e-store. The effectiveness of external filtering mechanism on alleviating the perception of information overload was also examined. Finally, this study also examined whether these relations would be different between novice and experienced consumers.
There are three main results that may contribute to our knowledge regarding the phenomena of information overload in the context of e-commerce. First of all, consumers incline to perceive higher information overload while accessing larger amount of information in an e-storefront (H1). The effect of information altering mechanisms was also supported (H2), indicating that consumers may alleviate the perception of information overload through the facilitation of information filtering tools.
Secondly, considering individual differences is necessary. As expected, individual with different information processing abilities and internal information filtering mechanisms may perceive different degree of perceived information overload. It seems that consumers with more on-line shopping experience may process product information more effectively and efficiently, hence perceive lower degree of information overload (H4). The results suggest that experienced consumers and novice customers may have significant different perception regarding the abundant information offered by current e-stores. This ‘‘personal difference” may partly explain the inconsistency of previous researches.
Thirdly, once consumers were strongly overloaded by abundant information, they incline to need no more information (H5). Opposite to previous assertion, more product information may not be beneficial to e-retailers and consumers. It seems that consumers, inexperienced consumers in particular, can not effectively handle too much information. Giving them large amount of information might not be able to enlarge their consideration sets; people may feel needing no more information, even if it is easier, cheaper and faster than past to get more information. Though information filtering mechanisms filter part of product information, they still do not need so much information.