An exploratory investigation of waiting on the internet: discovering the concept and developing the framework
- Autores: Gerard Ryan
- Directores de la Tesis: Jorge Montaña Matosas (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya ( España ) en 2004
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Jordi Vilaseca i Requena (presid.), Inmaculada Rodríguez Ardura (secret.), Alejandro Mollá Descals (voc.), Daniel Bastida Obiols (voc.), Eduard Bonet i Guinó (voc.)
- Materias:
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- Resumen
Internet users, practitioners, academics and web designers consistently complain that the Internet is frustratingly slow (Dellaert & Kahn, 1999; Selvidge, 1999; Weinberg, 2000; Rose et al., 1999; Rose & Straub, 2001; Sears et al., 1997; Georgia Tech Research Corporation, 1998; Johnson, 1998; BBC News 2002). Although the web doubles its delivery speed every two years, the amount of traffic on the net also doubles in a similar time period (Dembeck, 1999; Nua, 1999; Destounis et al., 2001). This places ever increasing demands on web servers (Kothari & Claypool, 2001) while web users are generally reluctant to upgrade their connection speed (Weinberg, 2000). In fact, many commentators suggest that delays on the Internet are likely to get longer before they eventually get shorter (Bhatti et al., 2000; Nielsen, 1999; Nua, 2001; Dunlop & Johnson, 1998; Rose et al, 2001).
As a consequence of a slow Internet, net users are forced to wait online. Seen from a marketing perspective, online consumers, or e-consumers, are being forced to wait for online products and services. Therefore, a further barrier is added to those which already hinder the commercial development of the Internet, such as problems with privacy of personal and financial information and the security of online transactions.
The problem with waiting on the Internet, as is the case in traditional services, is thatmany consumers will abandon in frustration the task they set out to achieve when forced to wait online (Dennis, 2001). Indeed, it is widely accepted that two of the main motivations why consumers use the Internet are time savings (Dalbholkar, 1996) and convenience (Rodriguez, 2002; Foucault & Scheufele, 2002). However, delays and waiting on the Internet may be neutralising these potential benefits (Dellaert & Kahn, 1999). In fact, in commercial terms, the problem of waiting may remove the principal attraction and lure for many consumers of adopting the Internet as a commercial alternative to traditional brick n'mortar services such as retail shopping, online banking, online news services and a host of other online activities.
Therefore, the subject of this doctoral research is on "Waiting on the Internet". More specifically, this thesis deals with waiting in two specific domains of the Internet, namely, the World Wide Web and electronic mail (email). The reason for the choice of domain is because these are the features of the Internet most commonly used by the majority of Internet users (ADAM, 1996; General Industries, 1997; Castells et al., 2002).
