Many times, obstacles that face novice users upset them
and the whole e-shopping experience ends in frustration. Instead of supporting users,
IT is making things more complex. As a direct consequence, users may simply turn
to the competition or decide to go back to the traditional way of shopping: ask friends
to accompany them, visit shops, talk to vendors, and bargain for better deals. It
should be noted that once IT is introduced into the process, the “social context” is
ignored. One of the challenges that needs tackling in the near future is how to integrate
the social context into the development of any user-oriented systems.
Schummer
argues that while e-commerce applications aim at easing the process of shopping
by simulating real world experiences, these applications unfortunately do not include
social factors in their simulation. Users are mainly kept separated and everyone is
shopping as if they were alone in an empty store. A survey done in Schummer
reported the importance of the social factors and showed that 90% of shoppers prefer
to communicate while shopping. Furthermore, according to Kraft, Pitsch, and
Vetter, the current malls on the Internet are characterized by a 2D representation,
navigation according to links, single-user environments, and static environments that
lack realism and interactivity.
In contrast, the shopping process in real life is definitely
a social one where people can get advice and share their experiences with others.
To deal with some of the obstacles to e-commerce, several experimental
technologies (for example, software agents, Web services) that aim at supporting
users are now available. The purpose of these technologies is to attract more consumers
and encourage them to participate in online business.
