The role of emotions in online consumer behavior: a comparison of search, experience, and credence services

Purpose – The main objective of this paper is to compare consumers' online shopping behavior across three types of services (i.e. search, experience, and credence). Reviewing the marketing and psychology literatures, this study aims to propose that consumers' emotions (pleasure, arousal, and dominance) influence their perception of site atmospheric cues (site informativeness, effectiveness, and entertainment), which, in turn, impact consumers' site attitudes, site involvement, and purchase intention. It also aims to test the proposed model for three major types of services (i.e. search, experience, and credence) and to compare the path coefficients of all the relationships in the model across the three groups. Design/methodology/approach – Lab experiments were conducted for data collection and structural equation modeling was utilized for multi‐group analysis. Findings – The results supported the proposed model and revealed several non‐invariant structural paths across the three groups. Research limitations/implications – The student sample may not represent the general population. Practical implications – Search‐, experience‐, and credence‐based services should attempt to evoke the most desired consumer emotional types (pleasure, arousal, and dominance). Originality/value – Unlike many other studies in services marketing, this paper tests the proposed model across different service types to increase the generalizability of the results.