An Experimental Study on User Satisfaction and Comparison Shopping Agents for Product Evaluation

Comparison-shopping agents (CSA) are intelligent agents designed to find product information based on the search criteria specified by customers. This research evaluated the effects of CSA on customers’ purchasing decisions. The determinants of user satisfaction are analyzed by comparing two different technologies, CSA and search engines, in a particular task of finding relevant information for purchasing books. Information quality and system quality were the two dependent variables in the research model. The independent variable was information search technology: a search engine or a CSA. Two experimental groups were used. The first group used a search engine and the second group used comparison-shopping agents during the experiment to purchase books. First group was not allowed to use any comparison-shopping agent. The sample size was 57 and 53 respectively for each group. Sample was randomly selected among students and faculty members of a Mexican university. Data analysis are conducted using t-test.