Design-to-lure in the e-shopping environment: A landscape preference approach

• We employ a landscape model to examine the impact of trust and satisfaction on e-shoppers’ willingness to buy.
• The Kaplan and Kaplan's landscape preference model involves coherence, legibility and complexity.
• Trust and satisfaction are great influences of willingness to buy.
• Coherence and complexity have great influences on trust and satisfaction.
• Legibility only has adequate influences on trust and satisfaction.

With the increasing popularity of online shopping, e-shoppers have been provided with a new medium for making purchases and this has attracted increasing attention from researchers and practitioners. Researchers are challenged to understand what constitutes a theoretical model for website design research. In exploratory work, we employ Kaplan and Kaplan's landscape preference model involving coherence, legibility and complexity, and investigate their relationship to trust and satisfaction and their impact on e-shoppers’ willingness to buy. Data from a survey of 300 shoppers were used to validate the model. A multi-group analysis with gender was further used to cross-validate it. The results show that trust and satisfaction are great influences of willingness to buy. Coherence and complexity have great influences on trust and satisfaction, but legibility only has adequate influences on these two variables. The structural weights are invariant across different gender subgroups. Implications for researchers and practitioners are also discussed.