Research on Electronic Commerce
A PROGRAM OF RESEARCH ON
USER-COMPANY COMMUNICATIONS IN ELECTRONIC COMMERCE
Izak Benbasat
Sauder School of Business
University of British Columbia
The presentation will describe the research conducted in the last decade with my colleagues and graduate students on user-company communications in electronic commerce. Given that the web site is a company’s “window to the world”, in its communication with the company the customer interacts directly with a number of information technology artifacts provided by the company (such as, product recommendation agents) as well as entities within that company (such as, sales assistants) via information technology mediated channels. This communication should be designed with the objectives of enhancing customers’ efficiency, effectiveness, and shopping enjoyment by providing high quality of IT-based services with the aim of improving customers’ trust in and loyalty to the web merchants. The presentation will also discuss how customers’ fears about the risks that exist and deception that might take place in electronic commerce could be alleviated. The talk will describe the overall philosophy of this stream of research, how it was conducted, and what its key findings are.