Online Consumer Hierachy of Needs - Is River Island Doing Enough?

River Island is UK high street clothing brand, which operates in a number of worldwide markets, with a global portfolio of over 300 stores. Alongside its numerous stores, River Island  provides a successful transactional website for customers to view the latest trends, purchase stocked items and occasionally benefit from exclusive items and offers; the site ships to over 100 countries worldwide (River Island, 2014). In order to appear on trend and offer a pleasant shopping experience, the website is designed to cater to the customer needs and wants. The website is the continuum between utilitarian and hedonic. Being a successful and well used website among its customers, the infrastructure of the website is certainly above the level of zone of intolerance.

River Island - Home Page

The OCHN (Online Consumer Hierachy of Needs) framework presents the relative value of various interface characteristics in a theoretical manner (Valacich et al, 2007). The framework starts with a strict order of importance: Structural Firmness, Functional Convenience and Representational Delight that together structure the zone of intolerance. These three categories have an implied sequence, which is consistent with their conceptual origin (Kim et al, 2002). This order of importance has been linked to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, once the lower levels are met, the higher aspects become of higher importance.

The structural firmness relates primarily to the characteristics that influence the web site’s security and performance (Valacich et al, 2007). With fast load speed, despite the large amount of high quality imaging and animation effects, the site is pleasing from the start. The site immediately appears stable and safe, with features for saving passwords (for existing site members) and secure transaction features. 

River Island - Payment Security

Functional convenience refers to the availability of convenient characteristics that help the consumer’s interaction with the interface (Valacich et al , 2007). River Island’s easy lay out and clearly labelled links also make navigating the site extremely easy (see figure 1). Hover-over drop down menus save time in locating items if you are using the site with something in mind, and the trend information or ‘new in’ sections give inspiration to users. 

River Island - Women's Trends

Representational delight refers to the web site characteristics that stimulate a consumer’s senses (primarily what they see and hear). River Island’s website is clean cut and on trend with geometric lines and a monochrome finish. No sounds are linked to the site, however on all pages there are visual aids and animation effects. The site is very graphically influenced and incorporates many high quality images.

Beyond the zone of intolerance, however, many factors can have an influence on the user’s experience (Valacich et al, 2007). Successful websites will need to make the most of different features in order to meet consumer needs; therefore not all interface characteristics will be equally valued in all situations. The higher section of the framework have been discussed with regard to the ERG theory of motivation which posits that more than one need may be operating at the same time.

This second section of the framework relies on the same three categories, this time without an order of importance and with the capacity for one to have a higher importance than the other. Although initially, the graphically pleasing imagery and animations seem of higher importance to the site, with design a very clearly important aspect to the designers; once the site has been explored and used for firstly finding new fashion trend information and secondly for purchasing products, it becomes apparent that structural firmness and functional convenience are also highly important. The site is safe in all aspects, with no dead links and with secure payment and log-in security. The functional convenience has been well thought out with clear labels, a menu bar that is visible at all times and quick load times.

River Island’s website allows online users to browse the different areas offering images, trend information and product information (a hedonic task), but also allows for the purchasing of items once decisions have been made (a utilitarian task). According to the framework, this would put River Island as a Hybrid website, offering an almost equal importance to structural firmness, functional convenience and representational delight.

To Improve:  River Island should consider a ‘Quick Buy’ option when hovering over an item, allowing site users to quickly purchase items. If users have come to the site knowing precisely what they wish to purchase, this could save time and be of benefit to such users.

References

Kim J, Lee J, Han K, & Lee, M (2002) Businesses as buildings: Metrics for the architectural quality of internet businesses. Informational Systems Research, Vol 13, No 3 p239-254

River Island (2014) “International Shipping” River Island [Online] <http://www.riverisland.com/international> Accessed 13/02/14

Valacich JS, Parboteeah DV and Wells JD (2007) “The online consumer’s hierarchy of needs”, Communications of the ACM, Vol 50, No 9, p84-90