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Internet-based interactive multimedia technologies enable online firms to employ a variety of formats to present and promote their products: They can use pictures, videos, and sounds to depict products, as well as give consumers the opportunity to try out products virtually. Despite the several previous endeavors that studied the effects of different product presentation formats, the functional mechanisms underlying these presentation methods have not been investigated in a comprehensive way. This paper investigates a model showing how these functional mechanisms (namely, vividness and interactivity) influence consumers' intentions to return to a website and their intentions to purchase products. A study conducted to test this model has largely confirmed our expectations: (1) both vividness and interactivity of product presentations are the primary design features that influence the efficacy of the presentations; (2) consumers' perceptions of the diagnosticity of websites, their perceptions of the compatibility between online shopping and physical shopping, and their shopping enjoyment derived from a particular online shopping experience jointly influence consumers' attitudes toward shopping at a website; and (3) both consumers' attitudes toward products and their attitudes toward shopping at a website contribute to their intentions to purchase the products displayed on the website.

This study assesses and compares four product presentation formats currently used online: static pictures, videos without narration, videos with narration, and virtual product experience (VPE), where consumers are able to virtually feel, touch, and try products. The effects of the four presentation formats on consumers' product understanding as well as the moderating role of the complexity of product understanding tasks were examined in a laboratory experiment. 1 Elena Karahanna was the accepting senior editor for this paper. Choon Ling Sia was the associate editor. Noam Tractinsky and Mario Koufaris served as reviewers; the third reviewer chose to remain anonymous. Two constructs used to measure product understanding performance are actual product knowledge and perceived website diagnosticity (i.e., the extent to which consumers believe a website is helpful for them to understand products). The experimental results show that (1) both videos and VPE lead to higher perceived website diagnosticity than static pictures; (2) under a moderate task complexity condition, VPE and videos lead to the same level of actual product knowledge, but all are more effective than static pictures; (3) under a high task complexity condition, all four presentation formats are equally effective in terms of actual product knowledge. Moreover, the results also indicate that it is perceived website diagnosticity, not actual product knowledge, that affects the perceived usefulness of websites, which further influences consumers' intentions to revisit the websites.

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P rivacy is of prime importance to many individuals when they attempt to develop online social relationships.Nonetheless, it has been observed that individuals' behavior is at times inconsistent with their privacy concerns, e.g., they disclose substantial private information in synchronous online social interactions, even though they are aware of the risks involved. Drawing on the hyperpersonal framework and the privacy calculus perspective, this paper elucidates the interesting roles of privacy concerns and social rewards in synchronous online social interactions by examining the causes and the behavioral strategies that individuals utilize to protect their privacy. An empirical study involving 251 respondents was conducted in online chat rooms. Our results indicate that individuals utilize both self-disclosure and misrepresentation to protect their privacy and that social rewards help explain why individuals may not behave in accordance with their privacy concerns. In addition, we find that perceived anonymity of others and perceived intrusiveness affect both privacy concerns and social rewards. Our findings also suggest that higher perceived anonymity of self decreases individuals' privacy concerns, and higher perceived media richness increases social rewards. Generally, this study contributes to the information systems literature by integrating the hyperpersonal framework and the privacy calculus perspective to identify antecedents of privacy trade-off and predict individuals' behavior in synchronous online social interactions.