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Ⅰ. Introduction

 A growing number of consumers have accepted e-tailers as a shopping channel. As the e-tail market continuously grows, the e-tail industry is becoming more competitive. Accordingly, it becomes more important for e-tailers to obtain and retain consumers, which demands a better understanding of online consumers.

 One of the well-known approaches to understanding consumers is to examine why they accept or reject an object, using an attitudinal model that posits the causal relationships of beliefs, attitude, behavioral intentions, and behavior (Dabholkar & Bagozzi, 2002; Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1992; van der Heijden, 2003). With significant progress in the attitudinal model during the past decade, the theory of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been one of the powerful theories to explain user acceptance of a system and is relevant to an online shopping context. TAM has been credited as a parsimonious and robust model (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000) that identifies individuals’ motivational factors as determinants of acceptance behavior (Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989; van der Heijden, 2003). Nonetheless, researchers suggest that future research should extend TAM by uncovering other factors that affect motivations (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000).

 Online consumers’ responses toward e-tail stores are different from those toward traditional retail stores partially because of online consumers’ lack of physical (i.e., consumer to store environment) and social (i.e., consumer to employees or other consumers) interactions with e-tail websites (Barlow, Siddiqui, & Mannion, 2004). However, the feelings of the physical and social contact of a store are important to consumers’ interacting with retailers, especially with apparel retailers. Therefore, the present study proposes that such feelings are important factors to be considered in consumers’ acceptance of a retail website. One of the key constructs in computer-mediatedenvironments (CMEs) is presence (Yadav & Varadarajan, 2005), which refers to a sense of being present in CMEs. The literature argues that media users’ perceived presence is an important construct to understand their interactions with the media, because this psychological feeling influences users’ beliefs, enjoyment, and behaviors (Biocca, 1997; Lombard & Ditton, 1997). Since e-commercial websites are a form of CMEs, the concept of presence has been attracted by researchers investigating consumer behavior in the context of e-commercial websites (Animesh et al., 2011; Coyle & Thorson, 2001; Gefen & Straub, 2003; Hassanein & Head, 2006; Hoffman & Novak, 1996; Hopkins, Raymond, & Mitra, 2004; Hyun & O'Keefe, 2012; Klein, 2003; Wang, Baker, Wagner, & Wakefield, 2007).

 Given the significance of presence in CMEs including e-tail websites, this study proposes that consumers’ perceptions of presence are possible factors that affect motivations in TAM. Although presence has been shown to play a significant role in CMEs, little research has been conducted to explore the relationship with TAM. The current study aims to identify the nature of the relationships between presence and the factors of TAM. Although little empirical research has been conducted, the previous literature implies a positive relationship between presence and consumer motivations in online consumers’ acceptance behavior. Proposing that presence is an important concept in an online shopping environment, the present study integrates the construct of presence into TAM in order to increase our understanding of online consumers’ acceptance of an e-tail website.

Ⅱ. Background

1. The core attitudinal model: TAM

 TAM conceptualizes that individuals’ behavioral intention to use a system is influenced by users’ motivations to use it (Davis, 1989; Davis et al., 1992). According to TAM, consumers’ perceptions of three dimensions of motivation (i.e., ease of use, usefulness, and hedonic motivation) serve as important determinants of attitude and their behavioral intentions. As in the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980), TAM agrees that attitude mediates the effects of users’ motivational beliefs on intentions to use (Davis et al., 1989). Moreover, attitudinal research has suggested that attitude is a central construct in the formation of individuals’ behavior as it has a strong and direct impact on behavioral intentions, which in turn influences behavior (Bagozzi, 1981; Bentler & Speckart, 1979). Given the importance, attitude has been widely accepted in consumer research as a way to understand and predict consumer behavior in various settings (Sheppard, Hartwick, & Warshaw, 1988).

Behavioral intentions in this study refer to online shoppers’ intentions to shop at a particular apparel e-tailer and to recommend the e-tailer to friends. Attitude refers to their positive or negative feelings toward a particular apparel e-tailer. The causal relationship between online apparel consumers’ behavioral intentions and their attitudes toward an e-tail website can be explained by the literature on TAM and attitudes (Bagozzi, 1981; Bentler & Speckart, 1979; Davis et al., 1989; Sheppard et al., 1988). A favorable attitude toward a store builds favorable behavioral intentions toward the store (Oh et al., 2009). Based on the previous literature, therefore, this study proposes that online apparel consumers’ behavioral intentions toward a particular e-tailer are influenced by their attitudes toward the e-tailer. 

 H1: Online consumers’ attitude toward an e-tailer positively influences their behavioral intentions toward the e-tailer.

 The original motivational beliefs in TAM are two factors: perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Davis (1989) defines perceived usefulness as “the extent to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance” (p.320), and perceived ease of use as “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of effort” (p.320). As users perceive a system as more useful and easier to use, they are more likely to form positive attitudes to accept the system. TAM has been addressed by many researchers; one database, Business Source Premier, shows over 1,100 journals in its database that cite TAM (as of May 2012), which shows the acceptance of two motivational beliefs, attitude, and behavioral intention as core determinants of acceptance.

 In addition to those two determinants, researchers, including the original authors of TAM, have included an intrinsic motivational factor into TAM as the third determinant of acceptance behavior (Davis et al., 1989, 1992; Moon & Kim, 2001; van der Heijden, 2004). As an intrinsic motivation, a hedonic motivation is compared with perceived usefulness, which is an extrinsic motivation. While an extrinsic motivation is the motivation to do activities for the values of outcomes from the activities, an intrinsic motivation is the motivation to do activities for the process of the activities per se (Davis et al., 1992). Intrinsic motivation explains a significant variance in usage intention beyond the variance accounted for by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use (Davis et al., 1992). Thus, an inclusion of an intrinsic variable to TAM has been widely accepted using such variables as perceived enjoyment in the use of computers in the workplace (Davis et al., 1992; Igbaria, Parasuraman, & Baroudi, 1996), and perceived fun in the use of technology-based self service (Dabholkar & Bagozzi, 2002).

 Perceived interest is adopted as an intrinsic variable in this study. In the context of online experience, flow is a crucial construct for understanding the experience of computer-mediated interaction (Trevino & Webster, 1992) and the act of online navigation and interaction (Novak, Hoffman, & Yiu-Fai, 2000). Flow, psychologically induced states during navigation, is a multi-dimensional construct characterized as control, attention focus, curiosity, and intrinsic interest (Trevino & Webster, 1992). Among these four dimensions, intrinsic interest refers to the individuals’ psychological state involved with the activity for enjoyment per se. Since this study concerns the online consumers’ intrinsic motivation of browsing websites, intrinsic interest is employed as the third motivation variable.

 Based on the previous literature, the current study examines three perceived motivations to understand online consumers’ acceptance of an e-tail website, which are (1) perceived usefulness of an e-tail website, (2) perceived ease of use of an e-tail website, and (3) perceived interest of using an e-tail website. We define them as (1) the extent to which online consumers believe that using (browsing) a particular e-tail website enhances their activity of shopping for apparel, (2) the extent to which online consumers believe that using (browsing) a particular e-tail website is easy, and (3) the extent to which online consumers believe that using (browsing) a particular e-tail website is interesting per se. Although little research has been conducted in the context of apparel e-tail websites, previous research conducted in similar contexts such as the use of general websites (van der Heijden, 2003), the use of the web (Moon & Kim, 2001), and the use of virtual store (Oh et al., 2009) has shown that this model holds in the usage of an e-tail apparel website.

 According to TAM, users’ perceived motivations jointly influence the users’ response (Bagozzi & Warshaw, 1989; Moon & Kim, 2001; van der Heijden, 2003). That is, each motivation, as a distinct construct, explains a significant portion of variances of the use of medium. Based on the previous literature, this study proposes that an online consumer’s perceptions of these three motivational factors jointly act as determinants of attitudes toward an e-tailer.

 H2: Online consumers’ perceived usefulness positively influences their attitude toward an e-tailer.

 H3: Online consumers’ perceived ease-of-use positively influences their attitude toward an e-tailer.

 H4: Online consumers’ perceived interest positively influences their attitude toward an e-tailer.

 Although some researchers consider perceived easeof-use as a direct antecedent to attitude (Dabholkar & Bagozzi, 2002), others consider it as the antecedent to perceived usefulness (Hassanein & Head, 2006) or to both perceived usefulness and intrinsic motivation (Davis et al., 1992; van der Heijden, 2003). As online consumers perceive browsing an e-tailer’s website as easy and free of effort, they are more likely to browse the website, which in turn influences them to find the website useful and the activity of browsing interesting. Therefore:

 H5a: Online consumers’ perceived ease-of-use positively influences their perceived usefulness.

 H5b: Online consumers’ perceived ease-of-use positively influences their perceived interest.

2. Presence: The antecedent

 The construct of presence has been proposed to understand users’ behavior in CMEs (Biocca, 1997; Lombard & Ditton, 1997). Communication theories argue that individuals’ perceptions of presence induced by media characteristics can influence their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors (e.g., Daft & Lengel, 1986; Reeves & Nass, 1996; Short & Williams, 1976). A higher level of presence enhances a user’s experience by providing the user with increased enjoyment, involvement, and task performance (Lombard & Ditton, 1997). There are generally six distinct conceptualizations of presence: presence as (1) social richness, (2) realism, (3) transportation, (4) immersion, (5) social actor within medium, and (6) medium as social actor, (Lombard & Ditton, 1997). Among the six conceptualizations, two dimensions―presence as social richness, generally known as social presence, and presence as transportation, known as telepresence ―have been mostly adopted by researchers in consumer research in the context of e-commercial environments (Animesh et al., 2011; Coyle & Thorson, 2001; Gefen & Straub, 2003; Hassanein & Head, 2006; Hoffman & Novak, 1996; Hopkins, Raymond, & Mitra, 2004; Klein, 2003; Wang, Baker, Wagner, & Wakefield, 2007). Following the literature, this paper employs these two dimensions of presence (i.e., telepresence and social presence), proposing that these two psychological states generated when online consumers are browsing an e-tail website play a significant role in their acceptance of the e-tail website.

 Presence is generated when individuals interact with a medium (e.g., virtual environment and website) (Kim & Biocca, 1997; Lombard & Ditton, 1997). According to the presence literature, if people feel increased perception of being present when they are interacting with a certain medium, they can experience the interacting situation in a similar way as in a physical situation (Kim & Biocca, 1997; Lombard & Ditton, 1997). Similarly, Klein (2003) reports that increased telepresence leads to individuals’ strong sense of beliefs about products presented on the computer. This is because the higher the level of telepresence, the more real the virtual experience.

 Telepresence in this study refers to the extent to which online consumers feel as if they are in a physical store when they are browsing an e-tail website. As telepresence induces the level of realness and vividness of a mediated environment to the extent that users feel they are in the physical environment, the users feel less ambiguous and clearer about the communication with the mediated environment, which increases the processing ability of the content of the communication (e.g., Kim & Biocca, 1997). As telepresence influences users’ processing of (Kim & Biocca, 1997; Li, Daugherty, & Biocca, 2002) and their beliefs about (Klein, 2003) the content in media, people with a higher level of telepresence are more likely to find the media more useful than those with a lower level of telepresence. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that online consumers’ perception of telepresence will positively influences their perceived usefulness of the e-tail website when browsing an e-tail website.

 H6a: Online consumers’ perceived telepresence positively influences their perceived usefulness.

 Social presence in this study refers to the extent to which online consumers feel a sense of humanness and socialness in an e-tail website when they browse the website. Social presence theory asserts that the effectiveness of communication is influenced by the ability of the communicated media to provide social presence that is appropriately needed for a task (Short & Williams, 1976). According to the social presence theory, communication becomes more effective when people feel that the interaction is closer to face-to-face (i.e., higher social presence). Conversely, when social presence is low, users’ interaction with an e-tail website is cold, which leads users to hardly believe in the e-tailer’s ability and predictability (Gefen & Straub, 2004). If consumers do not believe in an e-tailer’s ability and predictability, they are less willing to do business with the e-tailer, and the e-tailer is less useful to them. On the contrary, if the website interface contains higher social presence, consumers are more likely to find the e-tailer useful (Hassanein & Head, 2006). Thus, it is expected that when browsing an apparel e-tail website, a high level of online consumers’ perception of social presence will enhance their perception of usefulness of the e-tail website.

 H6b: Online consumers’ perceived social presence positively influences their perceived usefulness.

 The literature on flow suggests that flow is an important concept to understand the nature of online experience (Novak et al., 2000). Flow, defined as the “state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter and the enjoyable experience that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 4), is characterized as pure enjoyment (Csikszentmihalyi, 1977) and positive subjective experiences (Hoffman & Novak, 1996). While conceptualizing the antecedents and consequences of flow, presence is proposed to be one of the factors that lead to the flow experience (Novak et al., 2000). Since people become more engaged in a website when they have a strong sense of presence at the website, they are more likely to be in the flow. As in the state of flow, people are encouraged to participate in activities that support their intrinsic motivations, such as intrinsic interest in the process of the activities. As can be seen in the flow literature, people with a higher level of presence are more likely to feel interest in what they are doing than those with a lower level of presence. Therefore, when using (browsing) an apparel e-tail website, online consumers’ perceived social presence will positively influences the perceived interest in using (browsing) the website.

 H7a: Online consumers’ perceived telepresence positively influences their perceived interest.

 Social interactions in a retail store, such as interactions with employees in the physical store, are a strong component that induces consumers’ shopping emotions (Bitner, 1992). Similarly, in a computer- mediated environment, social presence conveys humanness and socialness of a website, which induces hedonic motivations (Hassanein & Head, 2006). As individuals’ perception of socialness increases, their psychological states including pleasure, arousal, and flow are enhanced (Wang et al., 2007). Therefore, it is expected that a high level of perceived socialness influences online consumers to have feelings of warmness and comfort in an e-tail website, which influences the activity of browsing the website to be more interesting.

 H7b: Online consumers’ perceived social presence positively influences their perceived interest.

 As illustrated in Figure 1, this study proposes a hypothesized model, which integrates presence (i.e., telepresence and social presence) and TAM (i.e., perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived interest, attitude, and behavioral intentions).

<Fig. 1> Hypothesized model.

Ⅲ. Methods

1. Data collection and sample

 Students in a southern-eastern university in the U.S. participated in the current study in exchange for extra credit. Sixty one female participants completed the online survey. They were firstly asked to browse the assigned mock website for five minutes. Although this study does not purport to examine the effect of website characteristics on perceived presence, two mock websites (i.e., high and low presence-inducing websites), which were developed by manipulating presence-inducing levels (Hopkins et al., 2004; Keng & Lin, 2006; Klein, 2003), were incorporated to create a variation in participants’ perception of presence. Although some of previous studies have employed pre-existing websites (Gefen & Straub, 2003) as stimuli, the current study used mock websites to eliminate any possible prejudice toward a particular e-tailer. The participants were randomly assigned to one of the two websites. Twenty-nine students browsed the high-presence-inducing website while thirty-two students browsed the low-presence-inducing website. A successful manipulation of the mock-websites was supported by the significant result of the multivariate analysis (Wilks’ Lambda = .029) and the significant results of one-way analyses of variance showing that the highpresence-inducing website is perceived as significantly higher in telepresence (F(1,59)=4.379, p<.05) and in social presence (F(1,59)=7.647, p<.01) than the lowpresence-inducing website. After finishing browsing the website, they were asked to fill out the questionnaire.

2. Measures

 All items were adopted from the existing literature. Appendix A shows the scale items. Each item was measured on a seven point scale and adjusted to indicate our mock e-tailer by including the name of fictitious e-tailer, “My Closet” in each sentence (see Appendix A). The measure for telepresence was adapted from Coyle and Thorson (2001). From eight items, six items were used. The rest two items were dropped for further analyses because they were not loaded on the first factor and they have meanings of “departure” rather than “arrival” of telepresence. The measure for social presence was adapted from Gefen & Straub (2003) (α=.89, AVE =75%). Perceived usefulness (α=.87, AVE =72%) and perceived ease of use (α=.88, AVE =74%) were adapted from Davis (1987). Among the original items of Davis’s (1987), one item was dropped for further analysis becausee of a low loading. Perceived interest was measured using three items, which were adopted from Wang et al. (2007) (α=.84, AVE = 76%). Attitude toward an e-tailer, adopted from Dabholkar (1994), was measured using four semantic differential scales (α=.90, AVE =78%). The measure of behavioral intentions used three items, which were adopted from Wang et al. (2007) (α=.96, AVE =93%). Exploratory factor analyses conducted on each construct supported that each construct was unidimensional. Cronbach’s α ranging from .86 to .96 showed the reliability of each construct.

Ⅳ. Results and Discussion

Simple and multiple regression analyses were employed to test the hypotheses. Table 1 summarizes the results of hypotheses testing. To test hypothesis 1, simple linear regression analysis was conducted. The analysis revealed a significant relationship between attitude and behavioral intentions in a hypothesized direction (Std. β=.63, p<.001, Adj R²=.38), supporting hypothesis 1. The finding suggests that behavioral intentions about an apparel e-tailer are positively influenced by attitude toward the e-tailer. Consistent with the previous research (Bagozzi, 1981; Bentler & Speckart, 1979), this study provides another evidence that attitude is a strong predictor of behavioral intentions in the context of online apparel e-tailer. 

<Table 1> Results of regression analyses

 To test hypotheses 2, 3, and 4, stepwise multiple regression analysis was conducted, which revealed significant relationships of attitude with perceived usefulness (H2) (Std. β=.27, p<.05), with perceived ease of use (H3) (Std. β=.21, p<.01), and with perceived interest (H4) (Std. β=.56, p<.001) (Adj R²=.72), supporting hypotheses 2, 3, and 4. Thus, the findings suggest that each of three motivations (i.e., perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and perceived interest) is a strong antecedent to jointly determine online consumers’ attitude toward an etailer. Also, the finding that these three perceptions accounted for 72% of attitude in our study suggest that online consumers’ attitude toward an apparel website is influenced mainly by their perceptions of how useful the website is for shopping for apparel, how interesting browsing (using) the website per se is, and how easy browsing (using) the website is. This finding implies that apparel e-tailers should consider their websites’ capability of increasing not one factor but all of the above.

 To test hypotheses 5a, 5b, 6a, 6b, 7a, and 7b, two additional analyses of stepwise multiple regression were conducted. Firstly, perceived usefulness was regressed on perceived ease of use (H5a), telepresence (H6a), and social presence (H6b). The analysis revealed that only telepresence (Std. β=.65, p<.001) remained in the model while other factors were excluded (Adj R²=.41), supporting hypotheses 6a while rejecting hypotheses 5a and 6b. The finding shows that only telepresence is a strong antecedent of perceived usefulness. Secondly, when regressing perceived interest on perceived ease of use (H5b), telepresence (H7a), and social presence (H7b), telepresence (Std. β=.53, p<.001) and social presence (Std. β=.34, p<.01) were remained while perceived ease of use was excluded from the model (Adj R²=.65), suggesting the positive effects of telepresence and social presence on perceived interests in browsing the e-tailer. Thus, H7a and H7b were supported while H5b was rejected.

 As one way to influence three motivational factors of TAM (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived interest), this study proposes the role of perceived presence as antecedent to the motivational factors in the context of an apparel e-tail website. Online consumers’ perceptions of “being there” (telepresence) and “socialness” (social presence) were shown to stimulate their perceptions of usefulness and interest in the website. Thus, e-tailers should consider effective ways to enhance consumers’ perceived presence. E-tailers may utilize their websites with cues such as animation, avatar, and search options to evoke their consumers’ experience of sense of presence.

 The findings failed to support the effect of perceived ease of use on other motivational factors (i.e., perceived usefulness and perceived interest), although the perceived ease of use directly influenced attitude. Therefore, w hile the present study supported the effect of the perceived ease of use as a direct effect on attitude as some of previous research proposes (e.g., Dabholkar & Bagozzi, 2002), it did not support its effect on the extrinsic motivation (i.e., perceived usefulness) and the intrinsic motivation (i.e., perceived interest), which is inconsistent with previous research (Davis et al., 1992). The possible explanations for the insignificant results (H5a and H5b) may be that the act of browsing the assigned website was too easy to begin with, failing to create a significant variation in the ease of use variable. Another possible reason might be that, in the product category of apparel, the perceived ease of use might not act as a significant factor to influence the perceived usefulness and interest. Or, since the student subjects were not asked to achieve any shopping goal when browsing the website, it might have led them to browse the website with no intention to make any effort at all. Therefore, future studies need to explore the inconsistent findings.

Ⅴ. Conclusion

 This study proposes the extended TAM model to examine how online consumers’ perceptions of presence and motivations might predict consumers’ attitudes and behavioral intentions. The overall conclusion from the current data is that TAM can be used to examine online consumers’ acceptance of an apparel e-tail website. Consistent with previous research, the current study supports the theory that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived interest act as strong determinants of online consumers’ attitude toward an apparel e-tail website, which leads to their behavioral intentions about the e-tailer. Moreover, the main contribution of this study is that this study extends the TAM model by integrating online consumers’ psychological states, presence, which is critical to understand browsing behavior (Hoffman & Novak, 1996). Therefore, the findings of the study suggest that it is imperative for e-tailers to consider consumers’ perceptions of presence and motivations.

Appendix A. Measures of Research Variables