Because of growing numbers of consumers who search product information in e-commerce, finding effective ways of presenting products is getting more important than ever before. However, the current Internet, where product presentations are relied only on vision, has great limitation in both product reality and credibility of quality. This study is about application of product sounds as an effective way of describing product functions instead of visual method and also as a new way of presenting product information which cannot be delivered in visual means. The purpose of this study is to find the impact of product sound on consumers' behaviors of obtaining product information through e-commerce.
Two experiments have been performed to find the effectiveness of product sound in consumers' acquirement of product information. In the first experiment, to see influences of sound on acquiring product information in e-commerce, several factors are evaluated from online consumer information search process focused on product information. Two sets of cases, the existence and the nonexistence of product sound, are considered in this experiment. According to the experiment, product sound has significant positive influence on a) product reality, b) belief about product function, and c) continual purchase and so on. It means that the product sound can enhance the recognition of product quality, which is limited in usual e-commerce.
The second experiment is to find out the kinds of product sounds that can increase information transfer of product and recognition of product quality. One kind of sounds that are effective is operation sounds, for instance, the sound of a running car engine. The other kind of sounds is passive sounds such as knocking or scrubbing on a product surface and is found not effective.
Consequently, the usage of product sound is effective for consumers' acquirement of product information in e-commerce because it promotes consumers' understanding of the product reality and product quality. This study suggests the importance of product sound as a new way of expressing product information in e-commerce. Thus developing e-commerce contents using product sound is a topic of further study.
