Abstract:

 The main objective of this research is to relate the online user’s motivation and experience with perceived quality and satisfaction in a predominantly goal-directed virtual environment like e-banking. The authors develop a model of online consumer behavior exploring the role of intrinsic motivation in online navigation. Intrinsic motivation refers to the motivational state in which people is attracted to and energized by a task itself, instead of merely by external outcomes that doing the task might yield. The flow state is also proposed as a possible metric of the consumer experience online and related with the exploratory behavior and intrinsic motivation, according to Novak et al. (2000) and Ghani and Deshpande (1994) conceptualization.  A specific scale has been developed and applied to an online survey at a major Portuguese e-Bank. 754 valid observations have been collected and the estimated structural equation model affords an integrated perspective of consumer’s perceptions, showing that both perceived quality and flow sate are major determinants of satisfaction (measured as a cognitive state) and positive emotions (measured as enjoyment).  The intrinsic motivation has shown to be a major input of the model, discriminating the levels of all constructs and revealing a segmentation tool in electronic contexts once its levels vary significantly across demographics. Implications, recommendations to banks and limitations are discussed.