Research on the Effect of the Recommendation System
on Customer Online Shopping Experience
J. Liu, G. Z. Hu*, Y. Yu, W. J. Yi*, L. L. Zuo*
Department of Management Science and Engineering
College of Management, Shenzhen University
dorcasl@163.com, yiwenjie821@qq.com, 1822145282@qq.com
Abstract—In context of keen competition among the online
shopping platforms, sellers and developers are finding critical
factors of recommendation system that could impact customer
experience. In consideration of this, we propose a research model
that examines the effects of two characteristics of
recommendation, i.e. recommended way and recommendation
performance, on customer online shopping experience. The
model was tested on a sample of 108 online consumers. The
results support our research hypotheses partially. The findings of
this study are expected to provide some suggestions for sellers on
promoting sales of online goods.
Keywords — online shopping; recommendation system;
customer experience
I. INTRODUCTION
As online shopping become increasingly popular in the past
decade, how to response to customer demand accurately, which
means how to make customer choice effectively and
efficiently, has become a business problem. In particular,
customer demand for personalized products is even more than
the demand of the low cost because of the large population and
the fierce competition. Moreover, numerous consumers enjoy
sharing shopping experience with others. Providing
personalized and even customized products or services for each
customer is a trend.
Recommendation system is an effective tool which can
predict and match the customer’s preferences through the
analysis of customer’s searching history and shopping
behaviors [1]. Recommendation system can reduce consumer’s
cost of decision-making [2]. For merchants, recommendation
system would help changing visitors into buyers, so that the
sales of e-commerce can be improved. Recommendation is
seen as a more effective and more reliable market tool [3].
Academic research on how recommendation system
influences customer psychology and customer behavior is still
in its infancy, especially the recommendation system of
customer experience. The existing research on the
recommendation system optimization mostly focused on the
recommendation system algorithm and customer behavior
system. The influence of psychological research is less and
there is little literature on recommendation system about the
emotional level of customer (experience and satisfaction, trust,
etc.). Motivated by the above discussion, we address two
research questions in this study: 1) what underlying dimensions
or components are selected to characterize the customer
* Corresponding authors.
experience? And 2) what the impact recommendation system
on the customer experience dimensions? We sum up the
dimensions of personalized recommendation system, and
empirically the influence of recommendation system to the
customer experience dimensions.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In
Section II, we discuss the theoretical background of customer
experience, recommended ways and performance of the
recommendation system. In Section III, we propose a
conceptual model and the theoretical hypotheses. We describe
the details of our empirical study in Section IV. The results
from the empirical study are presented in Section V. Finally,
we close with a discussion of the study’s findings and
limitations as well as possible directions for future research.
II. THEORETICAL FOUNDATION
A. Customer Experience
Carbone and Haeckel [4] pointed out that customer
experience is a perception deriving from possessing, using and
discarding products or services. Schmitt [5] defined the
experience as the customer response under the stimulus of the
outside world. Pine and Gilmore [6] proposed that each
experience derives from the interaction between the staged
event and the individual’s state of mind. In summary, we
define that customer experience is reflection and feeling during
the process of interaction with enterprises under the situation of
human-computer interaction.
B. Recommended Ways of Recommendation System
Liu [7] proposed that the recommender mechanism of
recommendations is on the basis of advertisements while
recommending promotion goods. Schafer et al. [8] argued that
recommendation system should make recommendations
considering the consumer preferences and other consumers’
reviews.
C. The Performance of Recommendation System
Sinha [9] put forward that good recommendations should
be useful and trust-generating. Bharati and Chaudhury[10]
found that system quality and information quality directly
affect the customer satisfaction with the decision-making.
However, the presentation of recommendation system has no
direct impact on the quality. Xiao [11] developed the concept
of agent internalization and proposed that recommendations
should have ability to understand and meet users’ demand.
D. Recommendation System and Customer Experience
Slovic [12] found that recommendation system’s
characteristics (customer trust and credibility) have a positive
effect on customer satisfaction experience.
Gershoff et al. [13] demonstrated that different forms of
personalized recommendation, including email and list
recommendations and others, have positive effect on
customers’ trust and satisfaction.
Benbasat and Wang [14] revealed the contents of three
aspects: the transparency of the recommended way increases
the trust of customers, in turn, affects customer experience.
III. CONCEPTUAL MODEL AND THEORETICAL
HYPOTHESES
A. Customer Experience
According to the literature review and analysis in the
previous chapter, this paper establishes a model on the effect of
the way of recommendation system and recommendation
performance on customer online experience. The model is
presented in Fig. 1.
Figure 1. .Conceptual Model
B. Theoretical Hypotheses
1) The hypothesis about the effect of recommended way on
customer experience
From the psychological point of view, Burnkrant and
Cousineau [15] argued that consumers always maintain close
relationships and social status with the group’s members so
that they have psychological demand to belonging to the
community. When the group make recommendations,
consumers are more likely to obtain psychological satisfying,
in order to keep consistent with the group. Thus it can be seen
that word of mouth recommendation has a positive effect on
customer experience.
Häubl and Trifts [16] pointed out that recommendation
system provides goods which have a strong correlation
between users of goods, and then lists the recommended
reasons and related information. Through improving the quality
of consumers’ consideration mechanisms, it can enhance the
shopping experience. Rook and Fisher [17] found that similar
to "visit the goods from the customers visit" anonymous
association recommendation from other consumers, can
enhance the customer's buying experience. Anand and
Mobasher [18] argues that the association recommendation can
help consumers choose and identify useful information in the
information overload environment, and it can reduce the
decision-making efforts. At the same time，it can improve
customer experience. This study assumes that association
recommendation has a positive impact on customer experience.
Xia [19] hold the view that advertising recommendation
can achieve personalization and ideal advertising environment
to give consumers better shopping experience. Dai et al. [20]
found that advertising recommendation is more likely to attract
users’ attention. And Users, advertisers and advertising
operators can all benefit. Rook and Fisher [21] thought that
anonymous association recommendations from other
consumers can enhance customer's buying experience. In this
paper, we assume that advertising recommendation has a
positive impact on customer experience.
Thus it can be seen that three different methods of
recommendations are able to affect customer experience
positively. We put forward the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Recommended way (a: word-of-mouth, b:
system, c: advertising) has a positive effect on customer
experience.
2) The hypothesis about the effect of recommendations’
performance on customer experience
DeLone and McLean [22] found that the personalized
recommendation system is often considered to provide better
services, so that consumers can get more satisfying experience
through recommender systems and recommendation auxiliary
decision-making process. At the same time, they also pointed
out that the simplicity of use has helped increasing users’
perception of recommendation system’s function, and thus
improved their satisfaction degree of experience. Langer and
Saegert [23] proved that satisfaction is the result of perceived
control. Thus when using recommendation system, users will
set up the system according to their own requirements, such as
modifying the choice that has made before, setting up the
characteristics of items and so on. This is the necessary
condition to achieve satisfactory experience during the process
of human-computer interaction. In the questionnaire of
Aljukhadar and Senecal, respondents emphasized that for a
recommendation system which can bring consumer satisfaction
experience, it is vital to have a function which can be used to
interact with other customers or online marketers [24].
Swearingen and Sinha [9] found that the system features, such
as navigation and layout of the interface, is one of the main
obstacles to influence users to accept the recommendation
system. Recommendation system with a clear navigation and
satisfactory appearance is easier to upgrade consumer
experience. The above researches all contained relationship
between human elements and customer experience. Therefore,
we can conclude that humanness of recommendation system
has a positive impact on customer experience.
 Benbasat and Wang [14] indicated that a trustworthy
network recommendation system can make a good impression
on customers, because it has ability to deliver benefits to
customers with credible and appropriate recommendations.
Mowen and Brown [25] suggested that when a consumer has
strong feelings of goodwill and trust in the recommender, and
the recommender can closely integrate with the product, the
recommend effect is most significant. Senecal and Nantel [2]
found that the recommendation system and its website
reputation and affect network marketers’ credit, and thus affect
consumer’s evaluation of recommendation system and even the
entire shopping experience. Benbasat and Zmud [26] also
believed that improving the transparency of the system is able
to increase customer satisfaction. The elements that scholars
mentioned above, such as website reputation, accurate
information and so on, constituted the trustworthiness of the
recommendation system. Therefore, we can assume that the
recommendation system’s reliability has a positive impact on
customer experience.
Empirical research results of Francisco showed that
intelligent recommendation system can bring customers
accurate recommendations, so that it can create favorable
shopping experience for customers [27]. Xiao [11] showed that
when the system is making recommendations, if it refers to
views and ideas of a certain group staff, the more likely they
are to trust the recommendation results and thus making a more
satisfactory evaluation. Mcknight and Chervancy [28] found
that the accuracy of the consumer perception information will
affect the degree of satisfaction experience. It is assumed that
the recommendation system intelligence has a positive impact
on customer experience.
We can concluded that the humanity, trustworthiness and
intelligence of the recommendation system have a positive
impact on customer experience, at the same time, the existence
of the recommendation system enables customers to get a
better experience. This paper puts forward the following
hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2: recommendation performance (a: humanity,
b: intelligence, c: reliability) has a positive effect on customer
experience.
factor analysis. The software we used are SPSS 13.0 and
LISREL 8.70.
1) Exploratory factor analysis
In order to ensure that the variables comprising each
proposed construct are internally consistent, reliability
assessment is carried out using Cronbach's alpha. All
constructs demonstrate acceptable levels of reliability (alphas >
0.70).
A principal component analysis with varimax rotation is
used to examine the measures. Five factors with eigenvalue
greater than 1.0 are extracted, which explains about 69.78% of
the variance. TABLE I and TABLE II report the results of the
factor loadings of the items after the varimax rotation. The
loadings of the items are mostly above 0.7. The factor analysis
is appropriate, because the value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin
(KMO) are 0.893, 0.9, 0.849 and 0.841.
2) Confirmatory factor analysis
Confirmatory factor analysis is performed with LISREL
8.70. The model fit is estimated by using the various fit indices.
All the indices (CFI, NFI, IFI, GFI) exceeded the commonly
acceptance levels (0.90), demonstrating that the measurement
model exhibited a good fit with the data. RMSEA shows the
discrepancy between the proposed model and the population
covariance matrix, to be 0.063, which is lower than the
recommended cut-off of 0.08.
Here we use structural equation model to test hypothesizes
by using LISREL 8.70 software. The first structural equation
model of recommendation system recommended performance
impact on customer experience. The value of Chi-Square/df is
159.90/98, which is smaller than 3. P-value equals 0.00000 and
the RMSEA=0.103. This instructs that the model not fitted
very well. The second structural equation model of
Recommendation system recommended ways impact on
customer experience. The value of Chi-Square/df is 146.37/98,
which is smaller than 3. P-value is 0.00112 and the
RMSEA=0.072<0.8, this instruction that the model fitted well.
TABLE I. ROTATED COMPONENT MATRIX OF RECOMMENDATION WAY
SCALE

Component
IV. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 1 2 3 4
In order to test our model, we conduct an empirical study. WOM1 .528
Most constructs in this study have been well established in the WOM2 .808
existing literature. We develop multi-item scales for each WOM3 .755
variable. The measures used in this paper are mainly adapted S1 .764
from relevant prior studies. All the items are measured by S2 .778
using a five-point Likert-type scale where 1=strongly disagree, S3 .508
3=neither agree nor disagree, and 5= strongly agree. We collect AD1 .741
data via an online questionnaire which requires respondents to AD2 .675
answer a series of questions regarding their experience on their AD3 .791
online shopping. At last we receive 108 valid questionnaires. AD4 .591
COSE1 .608
V. RESULS COSE2 .664
COSE3 .701
The reliability and validity of measurement for each
COSE4 .765
construct was tested by using exploratory and confirmatory
COSE5 .819
COSE6 .764
 As show in Fig. 2, we can find that recommendation
methods have strong and positive impact on customer
experience. H1 is strongly supported, and advertising
recommendations affect customer experience, H1c is supported.
However, there is no significant relationship between mouth
recommendations system and customer experience, H1a and
H1b is not supported.
Figure 3. The results of recommended ways impact on customer experience
TABLE II. ROTATED COMPONENT MATRIX OF RECOMMENDED
PERFORMANCE SCALE
VI. CONCLUSION
Component
1 2 3 4
In terms of theory, this paper reviews the research of
H1 .751
previous scholars in customer experience and recommendation
H2 .871
system and summarizes the recommendation system into two
constructs with three dimensions, respectively. Data are
H3 .785
collected through online questionnaire. Then we find that
H4 .580
dimensions of recommendation system basic similar with the
IT1 .809
divisions of other scholars after data analysis. That means our
IT2 .790
dimensions of recommendation system are valid. What the
IT3 .715 different that dimensions of recommendation system are
R1 .862 grouped into two constructs, recommendation system
R2 .811 recommended performance and recommendation system
R3 .532 recommended ways, respectively. We have provided a new
COSE1 .676 perspective to study the relationship between recommendation
COSE2 .538 system and customer experience.
COSE3 .779
COSE4 .784 There is significant relationship between recommended
COSE5 .770
performance and customer experience. As the abundance of
COSE6 .686
goods and information overload, people need to use
recommendation system to look for goods more efficiently.
The intelligence and trustworthiness of the system have
significant effect on customer experience. Intelligence can help
customers save time efficiently and it also illustrates the
recommendations are more mature and contains higher
technology. Trustworthiness can help customers to choose
goods they needed, thus customers can gain a better
experience. In this paper, we do not find that humanity has
significant influence on customer experience. Perhaps one
reason is that online shopping is very difficult to provide
personalized service, at the same time, our e-commerce
development is later, merchants and customers to this aspect of
consciousness is relatively weak. However, it doesn’t mean
Figure 2. The results of recommended performance impact on customer that humanity is not important. On the contrary, with the
experience improvement of consumption level, humanized service will be
much more important to the customer experience.
As show in Figure 3, we can find that recommendation
performance has strong and positive impact on customer There is significant relationship between recommendation
experience. H2 is strongly supported, and intelligence of methods and customer experience. At present, the marketing
recommendation affects customer experience, trustworthiness approach is quietly changing, kinds of marketing for the
also has strong effect on customer experience, H2b and H2c customers to accept more information and at the same time,
are supported. However, there is no significant relationship customers can be easily be affected. The methods of
between humanized and customer experience, H2a is not advertising recommendation have significant influence on
support. customer experience, word-of-mouth recommendation and
system recommended show no significant influence. That
means customers still get commodity information through
advertising activities. But with the change of the consumer
awareness in recent years, new way of marketing will be more
and more popular with the consumers. Recommendation
system needs to provide customers the platform for customers
to communicate and interact.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is partially supported by The National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Grants Nos. 71571120,
71271140, 71471158, 71001072, 61472257), Humanity and
Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of
China (16YJC630153), Natural Science Foundation of
Guangdong Province (2016A030310074) and Shenzhen
Science and Technology Plan (CXZZ20140418182638764).
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