Website Innovativeness: Development and Validation of the Measure
Edith Tremblay, Yellow Pages Group
Anik St-Onge, Assistant professor, UQAM
Jean-François Ouellet, Associate professor, HEC Montreal
Sylvain Senecal, Associate professor HEC Montreal
ACR Asia Pacific 2008
Website Innovativeness: Development and Validation of the Measure
Abstract
The main objective of the research was to develop a website innovativeness (WSI)
measurement scale. Following Churchill (1979), a literature review was performed to define the
WSI concept and generate measurement items. Additional items were also generated following
thirteen individual interviews with consumers. Next, expert judges were used to purify the scale,
which was then used in a large scale data collection (n=278). Two factors, novelty and
appropriateness, emerged for the exploratory factor analysis. The proposed WSI measurement
scale, in addition to being reliable, showed some evidence of content, discriminant, and
construct validity. Based on these findings, theoretical and managerial implications are
discussed.
2
Website Innovativeness: Development and Validation of the Measure
Abstract
The main objective of the research was to develop a website innovativeness (WSI)
measurement scale. Following Churchill (1979), a literature review was performed to define the
WSI concept and generate measurement items. Additional items were also generated following
individual interviews with consumers. Two factors, novelty and appropriateness, emerged for the
exploratory factor analysis. The proposed WSI measurement scale, in addition to being reliable,
showed some evidence of content, discriminate, and construct validity. Based on these findings,
theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
Extended Abstract
Although the Internet is one of the most significant developments in retailing in the last 50 years,
e-commerce still has not reached its full potential (Amato-McCoy, 2006). Dholakia and Rego
(1998) suggest that a company website does not currently provide significant competitive
advantages since it must compete with thousands of similar websites. In addition, consumers do
not seem satisfied with current websites and would like to navigate on new and different
websites (Blake et al., 2005). In order to get out of this cluttered environment and better satisfy
consumers, firms may implement innovative functionalities on their website. In fact, being
innovative online may increase website popularity (Dholakia and Rego, 1998). Hult et al. (2004)
show that the performance of a firm is influenced by its innovativeness. If the same relationship
holds true online, investigating website innovativeness and how it can be assessed becomes an
important strategic issue for online retailers. Thus, the main objective of this research is to
develop a measure for website innovativeness (WSI).
In the literature, the concept of innovativeness has been studied from several perspectives,
including product innovativeness (e.g., Cantalone et al.. 2006), consumer innovativeness (e.g.,
Goldsmith and Holfacker, 1991) and brand innovativeness (Ouellet, 2008). Conceptually,
innovativeness is suggested to be a multidimensional construct composed of at least two
dimensions: appropriateness and novelty. Sethi et al. (2001) define appropriateness as the
“Extent to which a given output is viewed as useful or beneficial to some audience” (p. 74) and
novelty as the “Extent to which a concept, idea, or object differs from conventional practice
within the domain of interest” (p. 74). Moreover, a recent study of Ouellet (2008) considers
another dimension of innovativeness, namely the frequency of novelty introduction. Hence, we
propose the following definition of perceived website innovativeness: Consumers’ perception
of how frequently a website introduces and updates new features that are beneficial for
consumers. This definition encompasses the above three dimensions of innovativeness
(appropriateness, novelty, and updating).
In order to develop the WSI measurement scale, we followed the procedure proposed by
Churchill (1979). Following the definition of the WSI concept, a set of items were generated
based on the literature and on thirteen consumer interviews. Once generated, items where then
submit to four e-commerce experts. This step was followed by the development of a
questionnaire, which was pretested (n=7) and then sent to a list of consumers via email. The final
data collection sample was composed of 278 consumers. At each step the items were modified,
eliminated, or unchanged in order to arrive at a final WSI measurement scale.
3
An exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation was performed. Based on the screen plot
analysis, two factors clearly emerged. The first factor explaining 44.07% of the variance
represented appropriateness items and the second factor explaining 24.50% of the variance
represented novelty items. In addition, the reliability coefficient was more than satisfactory for
each dimension (.977 for the appropriateness dimension and .940 for the novelty dimension).
The proposed WSI measurement scale (25 items) and its more parsimonious version (8 items),
were tested for discriminant, content, and construct validity. Results strongly support its content
and construct validity, while results for the discriminant validity were inconclusive.
From an academic standpoint, the present research extends the concept of innovativeness by
showing that it can be applied to websites. As suggested by research on innovativeness (Sethi et
al., 2001), appropriateness and novelty form the two dimensions of website innovativeness. The
updating dimension did not surface in our analysis, except for the frequent website user group.
For this specific group, it seems that the updating dimension of WSI is also an important
dimension, which lends some support to the three dimensional view of innovativeness (Ouellet,
2008). However, additional research is needed to support this finding. It has to be noted that the
type of websites used for the final data collection, i.e., travel website, is not the best type to test
the updating dimension of innovativeness. A type of websites more frequently used by
consumers would be better to test the relevance of the updating dimension (e.g., news, weather,
portals, etc.).
For managers, this measurement scale could be quite useful. First, the WSI measurement scale
can help managers assess the innovativeness of their website and of their competitors’ websites.
Furthermore, it can help pinpoint which dimension of WSI is dominant or lacking. Although
novelty seems to be the most important dimension, appropriateness also needs to be carefully
addressed when innovating. Thus, innovative features must be introduced carefully to ensure that
they are useful to consumers. Managers need to surprise consumers, while ensuring that the site
is still functional and easy to navigate. Firms can also use the WSI measurement scale to verify
the congruence between the innovativeness of their website and their brand. In addition, for
frequent visitors, content updating seems to be a relevant aspect to consider.
The main limitation of this research undoubtedly comes from the sampling method used. Since
convenience samples were used, results may not be representative of the population. Thus,
additional research using different samples is needed to bring additional support to our findings.
Future studies should also use confirmatory factor analysis to validate the structure of the
proposed scale and its more parsimonious version. Additional studies are needed to retest the
discriminant validity of the WSI measurement scale and the relevance of the updating
dimension. Finally, the WSI measurement scale should be integrated in a larger conceptual
framework in order, for example, to test the impact of innovativeness on outcome variables such
as revisit intentions, conversion rates, and satisfaction.
4
Website Innovativeness: Development and Validation of the Measure
1. Introduction
Although the Internet is one of the most significant developments in retailing in the last 50 years,
e-commerce still has not reached its full potential (Barwise et al., 2002; Amato-McCoy, 2006;
Economist, 2004). Dholakia and Rego (1998) suggest that a company website does not currently
provide significant competitive advantages since it must compete with thousands of similar
websites. In addition, consumers do not seem satisfied with current websites and would like to
navigate on new and different websites (Blake et al., 2005). In order to get out of this cluttered
environment and better satisfy consumers, firms may implement innovative functionalities on
their website. In fact, being innovative online may increase website popularity (Dholakia and
Rego, 1998). However, websites must not innovate just for the sake of innovation. Blake et al.
(2005) and Zeithaml et al. (2002) suggest that innovative features must be introduced carefully
in order not to confuse consumers.
Hult et al. (2004) show that the performance of a firm is influenced by its innovativeness. If the
same relationship holds true online, investigating website innovativeness and how it can be
assessed becomes an important strategic issue for online retailers. As a first step in this direction,
the main objective of this research is to develop a measure for website innovativeness (WSI).
The development of a psychometrically-sound instrument would allow for a consistent and valid
measure of WSI as well as its application across potentially all product categories. In the next
section, the relevant literature presents the concept of innovativeness and the concepts related to
website evaluation. This is followed by a description of the methodology that was used to
develop the WSI. A discussion of the findings and the limitations of this study conclude the
paper.
2. Literature review
5
2.1 Innovativeness
In the literature, the concept of innovativeness has been studied from several perspectives,
including product innovativeness (Cantalone et al.. 2006; Kleinschmidt and Cooper, 1991; Lee
and O' Connor, 2003; Sethi and Al, 2001), consumer innovativeness (Goldsmith and Holfacker,
1991; Hirshman, 1980; Midgley and Dowling, 1978; Roehrich, 2004; Rogers, 1995) and brand
innovativeness (Ouellet, 2008). However, only one study has examined the concept of website
innovativeness in particular,although it was not the main focus of the study (Loiacono et al.,
2002). The latter study rather suggested that website innovativeness is one dimension of a
second-order construct named enjoyment, which helps explain website quality.
Numerous studies have explored the various ways to measure innovativeness. Lee and O'Connor
(2003) see consumers’ perception as central to the development of an innovativeness scale,
rather than the need to obtain an objective measure. Sethi et al. (2001), who specialize in the
creativity research from a social psychology perspective, examine two dimensions that underlie
innovativeness: appropriateness and novelty. Other authors, based on the work of Jackson and
Messick (1965), define appropriateness as the “Extent to which a given output is viewed as
useful or beneficial to some audience” (Sethi et al. 2001, p. 74)) and novelty as the “Extent to
which a concept, idea, or object differs from conventional practice within the domain of
interest” (Sethi et al. 2001, p. 74). Moreover, a recent study by Ouellet (2008) considers another
dimension of innovativeness, namely the frequency of novelty introduction that we will refer to
as "updating.” This variable could not logically be brought to light in studies of innovative
products because such products were introduced only once. However, the case of websites is
much different: many managers frequently update their website.
We thus believe that the concepts of novelty, appropriateness and updating should only be
reflected in the conceptual definition of WSI. Hence, we propose the following definition of
6
perceived website innovativeness: Consumers’ perception of how frequently a website
introduces and updates new features that are beneficial for consumers. This definition
encompasses the above three dimensions of innovativeness (appropriateness, novelty, and
updating). In order to gain a better understanding of website features mentioned in the WSI
definition, a review of the literature on website evaluation is presented next.
2.2 Website Evaluation
The literature review on website evaluation enabled us to identify website features that could be
used in the development of the website innovativeness scale. Due to the large number of features
identified in the literature, a synthesis was performed to regroup similar features (e.g.,
navigation, ease-of-use, usability) under the same group of features (e.g., ease-of-use) and
discard features that are not related to innovativeness (e.g., reliability). Finally, we retained
seven groups of features, which were then used to produce a set of statements relating to the
website innovativeness scale. The seven groups selected are choice, content, ease of use,
interactivity of contact, personalization, transactional website and vividness.
2.2.1 The Choice Dimension
The choice feature corresponds to the: “Range of product categories and a greater variety of
products within any given category" (Srinivasan et al., 2002, p. 44). Torkzadeh and Dhillon
(2002) suggest that the offer of products and services could be better on the Web. It seems that
there is room for retailers to gain a competitive advantage by differentiating their online
offerings (Alba et al. 1997). Thus, the choice feature is related to the novelty dimension of WSI.
2.2.2 The Content Dimension
“Website information content is defined as the communicated material that appears on a
Website” (Montoya-Weiss and al, 2003, p. 450). Agarwal and Venkatesh (2002) suggest that
7
website information is composed of its quantity, its depth, and its update frequency. According
to Szymanski and Hise (2000), product information is one antecedent of website satisfaction.
However, since the content of certain sites can be redundant, the way the information is
presented is crucial because it increases the interest and the attention of consumers (Bucy et al..
1999). Because the content is a characteristic that must be updated frequently, this feature is
linked to the updating dimension.
2.2.3 The Ease-of-Use Dimension
Ease-of-use can be defined as the "Extent to which a customer feels that the website is simple,
intuitive, and user-friendly" (Srinivasan et al., 2002, p. 44). This dimension includes several
aspects such as intuitive navigation (Szysmanski and Hise, 2000), ease of finding a product or an
information (Yoo and Donthu, 2001) and the structure of the site (Agarwal and Venkatesh, 2002;
Zeithaml et al. 2002). Easy and simple to use websites lead consumers to hold more positive
attitudes toward websites and to be more satisfied (Dalbholkar and Bagozzi, 2002; Szymanski
and Hise, 2000). However, the frequent introduction of new features may decrease ease-of-use
for some consumers. Thus, ease-of-use is related to the appropriateness and updating dimensions
of WSI.
2.2.4. The Contact Interactivity Dimension
The interactivity of contact: “Refers to the dynamic nature of the engagement that occurs
between an e-retailer and its customers through its Website” (Srinavasan et al. 2002, p.42). The
contact interactivity can be implemented on a website in various ways, either by presenting the
products in various ways, by encouraging a reciprocal communication with the consumers and
the company (Huang et al. 2006) and by offering different decision aid features (Senecal and
Nantel, 2004).
8
Ghose and Dou (1998) believe that a higher level of interactivity makes a website more popular;
however Coyle and Thorston (2001) do not show that users’ attitudes toward an interactive
website are significantly higher than toward a less interactive website. Nonetheless, the contact
interactivity with a website makes it possible to communicate more effectively with consumers
(Huang et al., 2006). Contact interactivity is thus related to the appropriateness dimension of
WSI.
2.2.5 The Personalization Dimension
Srinivasan et al. (2002, p. 42) define personalization as the “Ability of an e-retailer to tailor
products, services, and the transactional environment to individual customers”. Studies realized
on personalization show that consumers tend to spend more time on a personalized website
(Greer and Murtaza, 2003) and that consumers have more confidence in their decision-making
(Huang et al., 2006) when the website is personalized. Personalization provides added value for
the consumer (Katerattanakul, 2002), which encourages site revisit behavior.
A parallel can thus be drawn between personalization and the WSI dimensions of
appropriateness and novelty. In fact, personalization is perceived by the consumer as being
useful and beneficial.
Further, personalization is related to the novelty dimension in that a
website could introduce a way to implement personalized product recommendations that differ
from the conventional practices in order to gain a competitive advantage (Greer and Murtaza,
2003).
2.2.6 The Transaction Dimension
This dimension concerns knowing whether a website allows consumers to purchase products
online. It seems relevant to include it in the analysis because not all websites allow online
purchasing and it seems that few websites use alternative methods of payment even if those
9
methods are available (Winter et al., 2003). Thus, transaction features can be related to the
appropriateness and novelty dimensions of WSI.
2.2.7 The Vividness Dimension
Vividness is the "Representational richness of a mediated environment as defined by its formal
features; that is the way in which an environment presents information to the senses” (Coyle and
Thorson, 2001, p. 67). This concept includes the number of senses stimulated by a medium and
the realism of the medium with respect to these senses (Coyle and Thorson, 2001). For example,
vividness can involve real time video, animations, and 3D images (Huang and Al, 2006). A
website with a higher level of vividness will generate a more positive attitude (Coyle and
Thorson, 2001). Because consumers may benefit from the vividness of a website, this feature
may be related to the appropriateness dimension of WSI. However, vividness may also
overwhelm website visitors, which may hinder ease-of-use.
To summarize, the literature on website evaluation proposes a large number of features that need
to be considered when evaluating websites. The seven groups of features presented are those that
are related to one or more dimensions of the proposed website innovativeness concept. Next, we
present the procedure followed to develop the WSI measurement scale.
3. Scale Development Procedure
In order to develop the WSI measurement scale, we followed the procedure proposed by
Churchill (1979). Following the definition of the WSI concept, a set of items were generated
based on the literature and on thirteen consumer interviews. Once generated, items where then
submitted to four e-commerce experts. This step was followed by the development of a
questionnaire, which was pretested (n=7) and then sent to a list of consumers via email. The final
10
data collection sample was composed of 278 consumers. At each step the items were modified,
eliminated, or unchanged in order to arrive at a final WSI measurement scale.
3.1 Individual Interviews
Thirteen consumers were recruited to participate in individual interviews. A list of 27 websites
belonging to companies in the clothing industry was developed. In order to generate reactions
from interviewees, sub-groups of 5 websites were then formed according to their variance on
choice, character, community, content, ease of use, interactivity of contact, online transaction,
personalization, and vividness features. Thus, each website within each subgroup of 5 websites
differed on the features related to WSI.
During the interview, each participant had to browse on a subgroup of 5 websites. While one
group of participants was asked to browse on the websites in order to get acquainted with them,
the other group was asked to find a product as a gift for a friend. Following their navigation all
participants were asked to rank order the websites from the most innovative to the least
innovative website and to discuss their ranking in order to elicit innovation related features.
Then, participants were asked to mention features not seen on these websites, but that they felt
was related to WSI. The data gathered from the interviews was analyzed in order to generate
items. These items were coupled with items from the studies mentioned in the literature review.
Once generated, items were evaluated by a group of judges.
3.2 Judge Evaluation
All measurement items were submitted to four judges, all of whom were doctoral students, via
the administration of a questionnaire. The questionnaire given to the judges contained a
definition of each WSI dimensions (i.e., appropriateness, novelty, and updating) as well as the
overall definition of WSI. The judges then determined on a scale from 1 to 3 (1: “Not at all
11
related”; 3: “completely related”) the extent to which each item was related to the dimension. All
items that obtained a score of 1 on dimensions relating to WSI were eliminated. Among the
remaining items, all items that did not obtain a score of 3 from at least two of the four judges
were also eliminated. Following this stage, the number of items on the list was reduced from 98
to 59.
3.3 Pretest and Final Data Collection
Before administering the questionnaire to the final sample, a pre-test with seven people was
conducted. Following the pretest, seven items were rephrased and three items were eliminated.
The questionnaire made it possible to collect data in order to perform a factorial analysis with
the three dimensions and see if they were included in WSI.
To ensure variance among the sites, we compiled a list of different sites from the travel industry:
Walt Disney, VAR Vacations, Club Med, Expedia, Routard, TMR, Air Canada, Air Transat, and
Go Travel. Based on a pretest performed with three consumers, these sites were found to exert
sufficient variance in terms of their website features. To allow the consumers to judge the
frequency of introduction of innovation on a website (updating dimension), they had to answer
the questionnaire regarding a site that they had visited more than once. In addition to the WSI
measurement scale, participants had to complete a 16-item website quality measurement scale
(Wang and Tang, 2003), a domain-specific innovativeness measurement scale (Citrin et al.
2000), an attitude toward the website measurement scale (Chen and Wells, 1999), and answer
four general questions about the website innovativeness and demographic questions.
Invitations were sent via email and questionnaires were completed by 342 participants.
Respondents’ age varied from 20 to 82 years, the mean age of the sample was 37 years old. The
12
sample was mainly female (51.6 %) and 61.5 % of respondents reported some university
education. The majority of the participants worked full time (50.4%).
4. Results
Following Hair et al. (2006), the dataset was first inspected for missing values. Sixty-four
questionnaires were deleted because more than half of the questions were not answered. The
remaining 278 questionnaires were again inspected for missing data. Additional steps were
taken, following Hair et al. (2006), to solve this issue. Items (n=5) with more than 10% of
missing values were also deleted from the WSI measurement scale and mean substitution was
used for the remaining missing values.
4.1 Exploratory Factor Analysis
An exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation was performed. Based on the scree plot
analysis, two factors clearly emerged. The first factor explaining 44.07% of the variance
represented appropriateness items and the second factor explaining 24.50% of the variance
represented novelty items (See Table 1). In addition, the reliability coefficient was more than
satisfactory from each dimension (0.977 for the appropriateness dimension and 0.940 for the
novelty dimension).
A series of analysis were conducted to assess the stability of the factorial structure. They
consisted in contrasting the factor solutions obtained within subsamples of respondents.
Comparisons were made between the factorial structure of men (n=104) and women (n=154), on
consumers with less (n=59) or more experience (n=195) shopping on a website, on consumers
less (n=74) and more involved (n= 175) in travel, and between light (n=133) and frequent
(n=119) website users. Factorial structures were generally consistent with the structure obtained
13
with the entire sample of participants in terms of the number of factors extracted, the pattern of
factor loadings and the reliability of both dimensions.
An additional exploratory factor analysis was performed using participants who claimed to have
visited the website at least four times in the last six months (n = 83) in order to test if the
updating items (n=5) would form a third factor in this particular situation. In the three factor
solution obtained, only one updating item formed the third factor. Although not conclusive in
our study, this dimension would need further research.
In addition, a linear regression using WSI (measured with four general questions about the
website innovativeness) as the dependent variable and novelty and appropriateness as
independent variables was performed. The results show that the two factors have a significant
impact on WSI (Std βnovelty = .758, p < .001 and Std appropriateness = .161, p<.001). The adjusted Rsquare of the regression model is .639 and the F-test associated with the model is significant.
Again, these two dimensions indicated that they were underlying dimension of WSI.
4.2 Validity Assessment
First, we performed correlations between the WSI measurement scale dimensions and the
website quality measurement scale proposed by Wang and Tang (2003) in order to test for
discriminant validity. We initially wanted to correlate WSI dimensions with each website quality
dimensions but we did not obtain the four factor structure obtained by Wang and Tang (2003).
Instead a one factor solution emerged with a Cronbach alpha of .954. The correlation between
the WSI appropriateness dimension and the website quality scale was high (.700, p < .001) and it
was much lower for the correlation between the WSI novelty dimension and the website quality
scale (.422, p < .001). Although the latter correlation indicated some level of discriminant
validity, overall the results are not conclusive. Additional research perhaps using a more stable
14
website quality measurement scale is needed before concluding that the proposed WSI
measurement scale show strong evidence of discriminant validity.
Second, we tested the proposed scale for construct validity. In order to carry out this test, the
construct must be placed in larger framework (Cronbach et Meehl, 1955). Based on self-image
congruence theory (Sirgy, 1985; Sirgy et al., 2000), we suggest that consumers will have more
positive attitude toward websites that are as innovative as they are. Thus, a global WSI index
was created for each respondent and website by summating the two dimensions. We then created
a "difference between WSI and domain-specific consumer innovativeness" variable. This
variable was used as the independent variable in a regression model to explain the attitude
toward the site. As expected, the standardized beta was negative and significant (-.226, p <
.001), which means that the smaller the distance between the WSI and participants’ own domainspecific innovativeness, the more positive was their attitude toward the site. Thus, the proposed
WSI measurement scale showed evidence of construct validity.
4.3 A More Parsimonious WSI Measurement Scale
The initial exploratory factorial analysis resulted in a measurement scale containing 25 items.
However, this large number of items may limit the usefulness of the WSI measurement scale. In
an effort to reduce the number of items, we only retained the four items with the highest loadings
on each factor (see Table 2). The Cronbach alphas were very satisfactory (.908 and .909) and the
explained variance was 42.26% for appropriateness dimension and 36.06% for the novelty
dimension. The stability of the structure was verified for the same subgroups (gender,
involvement, use, experience), which yielded identical results, except for the group of consumers
with little experience, for whom we had to remove the statement "This website is a great
improvement compared to existing websites." Again, we performed a regression analysis using
both dimensions of the WSI measurement scale as independent variables and the four general
website innovativeness questions as the dependent variable. The regression model explained
15
53.7% of the variance and the standardized beta of the novelty dimension was .692 (p < .001)
and .196 (p < .001) for the appropriateness dimension. Whereas discriminant validity was
evaluated by the comparison between WSI and the quality of the Website, it reveals a correlation
of.381 for the novelty factor,.659 for the appropriateness factor. Again, discriminant validity is
not conclusive. To test the construct validity, we performed a regression using the attitude
toward the site as the dependent variable and the difference between WSI and domain-specific
consumer innovativeness as the independent variable following the same procedures as
described above. Again, results showed a negative and significant standardized beta (-.237, p <
.001), which showed evidence of construct validity. In summary, the more parsimonious version
the WSI measurement scale showed similar psychometric properties than the original version,
which were generally satisfactory.
5. Discussion and Conclusion
The main objective of this research was to develop a website innovativeness (WSI)
measurement scale. Following Churchill (1979), a literature review was performed to define the
WSI concept and generate measurement items. Additional items were also generated following
thirteen individual interviews with consumers. Next, expert judges were used to purify the scale,
which was then used in a large scale data collection (n=278).
Two factors, novelty and
appropriateness, emerged from the exploratory factor analysis. The proposed WSI measurement
scale and its more parsimonious version, in addition to being reliable, showed some evidence of
content, discriminant, and construct validity.
From an academic standpoint, the present research extends the concept of innovativeness by
showing that it can be applied to websites. As suggested by research on innovativeness (Sethi et
al., 2001), appropriateness and novelty form the two dimensions of website innovativeness. The
updating dimension did not surface in our analysis, except for the frequent website user group.
16
For this specific group, it seems that the updating dimension of WSI is also an important
dimension, which lends some support to the three dimensional view of innovativeness (Ouellet,
2008). However, additional research is needed to support this finding. It has to be noted that the
type of websites used for the final data collection, i.e., travel website, is not the best type to test
the updating dimension of innovativeness. A type of websites more frequently used by
consumers would be better to test the relevance of the updating dimension (e.g., news, weather,
portals, etc.). Finally, using the self-image congruence theory (Sirgy, 1985; Sirgy et al., 2000), it
seems that the smaller the distance between the WSI and participants’ own domain-specific
innovativeness, the more positive was their attitude toward the site.
For managers, this measurement scale could be quite useful. First, the WSI measurement scale
can help managers assess the innovativeness of their website and of their competitors’ websites.
Furthermore, it can help pinpoint which dimension of WSI is dominant or lacking. Although
novelty seems to be the most important dimension, appropriateness also needs to be carefully
addressed when innovating. Thus, innovative features must be introduced carefully to ensure that
they are useful to consumers. Managers need to surprise consumers, while ensuring that the site
is still functional and easy to navigate. Firms can also use the WSI measurement scale to verify
the congruence between the innovativeness of their website and their brand. Since WSI
influences the attitude towards the website, managers need to verify if their website corresponds
to the needs of their visitors. More innovative consumers will prefer more innovative websites.
In addition, for frequent visitors, content updating seems to be a relevant aspect to consider.
The main limitation of this research undoubtedly comes from the sampling method used. Since
convenience samples were used, results may not be representative of the population. Thus,
additional research using different samples is needed to bring additional support to our findings.
Future studies should also use confirmatory factor analysis to validate the structure of the
17
proposed scale and its more parsimonious version. Additional studies are needed to retest the
discriminant validity of the WSI measurement scale and the relevance of the updating
dimension. Finally, the WSI measurement scale should be integrated in a larger conceptual
framework in order, for example, to test the impact of innovativeness of outcome variables such
as revisit intentions, conversion rates, and satisfaction.
6. References
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Amato-Mccoy, Deena M. (2006). “Imagine the Possibilities”, Chain Store Age, 82 (9), 2C-2C.
Agarwal, Ritu and Viswanath Venkatesh (2002). “Assessing a Firm’s Web Presence: A
Heuristic Evaluation Procedure for the Measurement of Usability”, Information Systems
Research, 13 (2), 168-186.
Barwise, Patrick, Anita Elberse and Kathy Hammond (2002). “Marketing and the Internet: A
Research Review”, Future media Working Paper, 01-801, 1-76.
Bucy, Erik P. Annie Lang, Robert F. Potter and Maria Elizabeth Grabe (1999). “Formal Features
of Cyberspace: Relationships Between Web Page Complexity and Site Traffic”, Journal of
the American Society for Information Science, 50 (13), 1246-1256.
Blake, Brian F., Kimberly A. Neuendorf and Colin M. Valdiserri (2005). “Tailoring New
Websites to Appeal to Those Most Likely to Shop Online”, Technovation, 25 (10), 12051214.
Calatone, Roger J., Kwong Chan and Anna S. Cui (2006). “Decomposing Product
Innovativeness and Its Effects on New Product Success”, Journal of Product Innovation
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22
Table 1. Exploratory Factor Analysis and Reliability Results
Appropriateness
Factor
Novelty
Factor
0.059
0.127
0.166
-0.006
-0.020
0.038
0.070
0.069
0.166
0.841
0.853
0.789
0.796
0.725
0.881
0.916
0.893
0.900
0.909
0.851
0.858
0.716
0.756
0.753
0.791
0.863
0.824
0.849
0.809
0.725
0.136
0.033
0.154
0.187
0.156
-0.013
-0.006
0.033
0.025
0.114
0.123
0.115
0.915
0.846
0.817
0.805
0.977
44.07 %
0.075
0.094
0.149
0.070
0.940
24.50 %
This website give me an impression of something I’ve never seen before
This website provides a way to navigate that is different from other sites.
This website is a great improvement compared to existing websites.
This website is unique
The concept of this website is new.
This website integrates new communication functions
The search methods available on this website are different.
This website gives me a new method of interaction
My last visit to this website was exciting.
This website offers its products well.
This website offers content that is useful for consumers
This website uses the media effectively and appropriately to communicate its contents.
This website provides information with sufficient detail.
I think it would be easy to make this website do what I want it to do.
This website is easy to use.
My interaction with this website is clear.
This website enables me to quickly find what I want
This website offers a layout which is easy to follow.
This website is really convenient to use.
This website provides easy to follow search methods
This website gives me the impression of having control. (e.g. participating in
choosing)
I find this website useful as I carry out my tasks.
Using this website would make purchasing easier.
Using this website would help me shop more quickly.
When I do searches on this site, the results are relevant to my query
Cronbach’s alpha
Variance explained
Table 2. Principal Component Analysis and Reliability Results (Reduced scale)
This website provides a way to navigate that is different
from other sites.
This website is unique
The concept of this website is new.
The search methods available on this website are different
from those of other sites
My interaction with this website is clear.
This website offers a layout that is easy to follow.
This website is really convenient to use.
I find this website useful as I carry out my tasks.
Cronbach’s alpha
Variance explained
Appropriateness
Factor
Novelty
Factor
0.127
0.756
-0.006
-0.020
0.070
0.791
0.863
0.849
0.916
0.900
0.909
0.915
0.908
42.26 %
-0.006
0.025
0.114
0.075
0.909
36.06 %
23
24