There is significant interest among marketers and academics to understand how to segment online consumers to better fulfill their needs. Previous literature on brick-and-mortar shopping has advocated demographic variables as simple yet valuable indicators to understand consumers and segment them accordingly. However, research in the online shopping context has produced mixed findings about the effects of demographics, which limit their utility to online merchants. As an attempt to address the ambiguity, the study proposes a more comprehensive approach to investigate the effects of demographic variables in the online shopping context. This is done by considering the demographic variables in combinations and using clickstream data to more accurately derive online shoppers’ surfing behaviour for segmentation purposes. Following this approach, our study investigates the effects of the demographic variables of gender, age, income, and education, based on the theories of media naturalness and consumer trait and involvement. The results reveal various effects of age, income, and education on online consumers’ needs being reflected in their store visit strategies. Implications are suggested for e-commerce research and practice.

A laboratory experiment was carried out to partially test the task-medium fit proposition in a GSS environment. Communication medium was varied using a face-to-face GSS and a dispersed GSS setting. Task type was varied using an intellective and a preference task. Group decision outcome variables of interest were (actual and perceived) decision quality, decision time, decision satisfaction, and decision process satisfaction. With the intellective task, there were no significant differences between face-to-face GSS and dispersed GSS groups for all group decision outcome variables. With the preference task, face-to-face GSS groups performed significantly better than dispersed GSS groups for all group decision outcome variables. These findings suggest that group decision outcomes in a GSS environment tend to be adversely affected when the communication medium is too lean for the task but not when the communication medium is too rich for the task. Consequences of providing groups with too rich and too lean a communication medium for their task are discussed. Implications of these findings, and other related results, for practice and for future revisions of media richness theory are explored.

This paper reports the findings of an empirical research on the effect of group support system (GSS) and task type on social influences in small groups. It examines the task type with an intellective task and a preference task, and analyzes social influences in terms of informational and normative influence. The main findings are: (1) informational influence dominated in intellective task groups whereas normative influence dominated in preference task groups; and (2) a GSS amplified informational influence in intellective task groups and attenuated normative influence in preference task groups. The paper suggests further research using varying levels of GSS support and different task types to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of GSS and task type on social influences in small groups.

This study investigates the effects of a GSS on the decision outcome of five-person, face-to-face groups performing two distinct but related task types. A controlled laboratory experiment with a 3/spl times/2 factorial design was employed. The independent variables were support level and task type. A total of 68 groups were randomly assigned to different support levels (no support, structure support, of GSS support). Half of these groups performed an intellectual task while the other half performed a preference task. The empirical findings show that task type affects consensus change and influence equality. Moreover, support level and task type jointly affect decision scheme satisfaction. This paper attempts to reconcile the body of empirical findings from related GSS studies. It discusses the implications of task type for GSS design and use.>