Visit Duration and Consumer Preference toward Web Portal Conent

A Web portal possesses a number of unique advantages. Discussion of these advantages centers on improved information access via either customized access to selected information sources or through the improvements brought about by content management applications. A Web portal can provide functionalities that customize and personalize information flow to the Web surfers (Hoffman & Novak, 1996). In addition, it not only serves as a traditional advertising media, but also as an integrated marketing communication tool (Bush et al., 1998). Although it may be seen as an exciting tool of this kind, its effectiveness in terms of consumer engagement and persuasion has yet to be demonstrated empirically (Bezjian-Avery, Calder, & Iacobucci, 1998). To date, consumer behavior on the Web portal has been examined to assess whether Web portal marketing communication has been effective, but further empirical study is required to establish whether evaluating that effectiveness on the basis of Web portal consumer behavior is in fact a valid form of measurement (Bucklin & Sismeiro, 2003). Specifically, it is not clear whether an increase in visit duration corresponds with an increased positive attitude towards a Web portal site, that is, whether more time spent on a site, is an increasingly favorable reflection on its content (Balabanis & Reynolds, 2001). Some researchers argue that consumer browsing experience and involvement with a Web portal site affect visit duration (Bucklin & Sismeiro, 2003). In addition, the nature of Web browsing mechanism, such as a cache, proxy, and dynamic IP might give rise to the undercounting problem of visit duration (Berthon, Pitt, & Watson, 1996). Therefore, validating the effectiveness remains impossible until Web behavior measures, such as visit duration, can be empirically proven to represent consumer attitudes. Until then, relying on such measurement is only conjecture. The objective of this research is to determine whether visit duration serves a proxy of Web surfer’s preferences towards the Web portal content. An individual-based browsing behavior tracking methodology is employed and a set of experimental Web pages were designed on the theoretical basis of conjoint analysis to accurately measure visit duration by individual consumers. We will begin by examining various ways of measuring Web portal consumer behavior. Next we will consider the importance of content on the Web portal. An examination of this relationship may answer the question of whether visit duration is indicative of marketing effectiveness on the portal. The marketing effectiveness variable under consideration is portal content, with site design operating as a control variable.