Investigation of aNobii users’searching and decision making with social navigational tools
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
He, Jian-Hao
Abstract
The study set out to investigate users’ interaction with aNobii, an online social network site for book lovers. Specifically, it looked into users’ judgment and browsing behaviors when using three book discovery tools afforded by aNobii: “friends”, “similar bookshelves”, and “authors.”
A total of 34 participants took part in the study in which they were asked to use alternately with the three tools to look for books they found interesting. The participant’s screen activities was recorded and was reviewed jointly afterwards by the researcher and the participant during the post-search interview. They were asked about their choice criteria when choosing which bookshelves to browse and books to read. It was found that participants relied on different cues when choosing bookshelves with different book discovery tools. Among the three tools, “similar bookshelves” was found to be most effective in broadening one’s reading horizon. Friends’ bookshelves were also found to be an interesting book discovery tool. The participants judged the usefulness of friends’ bookshelves by their understanding of their tastes.
The influences of various cues such as topic, plot, author, online reader reviews and star ratings on their judgment were investigated. Topic and author were found to be most useful for judging the desirability of the works. While online book review was found to play an important role for users to infer the book content and filter out non-relevant titles, star rating was found to be less useful.
Subjects
preference
decision making
experienced goods
social navigational tools
internet book review
star rating
Type
thesis
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