The Effect of Representational UI Design Quality of Mobile Shopping Applications on Users' Intention to Shop

Since today's mobile devices were launched back in the late 1990s, a wide variety of cutting-edge technologies has been used to provide users with up-to-date content and functions by means of the user interfaces (UI) of mobile applications. Because of a variety of content and functions, the UI of most mobile applications gradually has become more complicated and ambiguous to use. Such user environments have degraded the representational UI design quality of most mobile applications. They have also negatively affected not only the usability of mobile shopping applications, but also users' intention to use the applications to shop. A literature review reveals that prior research in information systems (IS) has not shown much interest in the relationships between the representational UI design quality of mobile shopping applications, the usability of the applications, and users' intention to use the applications to shop. The research goals of this study are: (1) to examine the direct effects of the conciseness and consistency of the UI design of mobile shopping applications on the usability of the applications, as well as on users' intention to use the applications to shop, and (2) to find the relationship between the usability of mobile shopping applications and users' intention to use the applications to shop. A survey was conducted to collect data, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was then used to analyze the data. The results of this study show that the representational design quality of the UI of mobile shopping applications has a significant, direct effect on the usability of the applications and on users' intention to use the applications to shop. In addition, the usability of the applications also has a significant effect on the users' intention to use the applications to shop.