Modeling Utilitarian Consumption Behaviors in Online Shopping: An Expectation Disconfirmation Perspective

Utilitarian consumption appeals to the cognitive rationality of consumers by accentuating the attainment of desirable transactional outcomes. While substantial knowledge has been accumulated on understanding the determinants of consumers’ acceptance of e-commerce websites, there is a paucity of studies that explore customers’ pre-consumption service expectations in order to determine how these expectations may be leveraged by e-merchants in creating matching e-services. Drawing on the Expectation Disconfirmation Theory (EDT), this study advances a model that not only delineates utilitarian expectations into its constituent dimensions, but also highlights how these expectations can be best served through transactional functionalities devised for improving the functional performance of e-commerce websites. The model is then empirically verified via an online survey questionnaire administered on a sample of 183 student participants. Theoretical contributions and pragmatic implications to be gleaned from our proposed model and its subsequent empirical validation are discussed.