Title: The effect of counterproductive time on online task completion

Authors: Jacques Nantel, Sylvain Senecal

Addresses: HEC Montreal, 3000 Chemin de la Cote-Sainte-Catherine, Montreal (Quebec), H3T 2A7, Canada. ' RBC Financial Group Chair of E-Commerce, HEC Montreal, 3000 Chemin de la Cote-Sainte-Catherine, Montreal (Quebec), H3T 2A7, Canada

Abstract: The objective of this study was to investigate how counterproductive time spent on a website affects consumers| online task completion. Two hundred and twenty-eight consumers were asked to perform a task on determined websites. Verbal protocols and clickstream data were collected. The results of Study 1 showed that the time spent waiting for pages to download had no effect on task completion, but that the time lost on pages that were useless to the task at hand had a negative impact on consumers| task completion. Study 2 indicated that the downloading time related to pages that were useful to consumers had no effect on task completion, but downloading times related to pages that were useless had a significant impact on task completion. Managerial and theoretical implications are discussed.

Keywords: internet; online consumers; downloading time; dead-ends; task completion; counter-productive time; online tasks; website tasks.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMA.2009.027809

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 2009 Vol.5 No.4, pp.246 - 259

Published online: 11 Aug 2009 *

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