We have investigated an information presentation method to help the customers make a concept-articulation type of purchase. When observing human behavior in the actual purchase activities, the underlying mental process may be roughly categorized into the following two types: problem-solving and concept-articulation. When customers follow the problem-solving type, they have clear image and functional requirements on desired products, and perform problem-solving in a way that they look for the products which meet their requirements. When they follow the concept-articulation type, on the other hand, they only have vague requirements on their needs, and try to make a gradual clarification and/or refinement of their requirements through the interaction with salesclerks. In other words, the problem-solving type of purchase means that the customers have previously decided what to buy, whereas the concept-articulation type means that their decision be achieved by consideration in the process.
Most of existing online shopping sites assume that customers' requirements have been already determined. That is, they only target the problem-solving type of purchase. This study aims at developing online shopping systems which can help the customers make a concept-articulation type of purchase. Its purpose is specifically to establish information presentation methods to effectively support the customer's concept formation process, and to build the design methodology for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to realize them.
This study started with observing human behavior in the actual purchase activities. Then, through protocol analyses of actual conversation between the customer and salesclerk, we have found revealed that appropriate information given by the clerk in a timely manner often causes the customer's focus to be changed to lead the change of their search goal itself in their decision-making process when shopping. We have also found that this interaction is effective in decision-making for the concept-articulation type of purchase.
Based on the knowledge acquired from the analysis of human behavior in the actual purchase activities, this study has created a system, called S-Conart(CONcept ARTiculator for Shoppers), to support the concept-articulation type of purchase. The authors are developing a system which puts special emphasis on the appropriate information presentation to support the customer's concept formation instead of replacing human communication with HCI as is. We have already verified that spatial arrangement as a presentation style is useful for creativity support. Therefore, also in online shopping, information presented through spatial arrangement may be expected to promote decision-making during purchasing.
This paper describes the system configuration and interaction design of S-Conart, and introduces the result of the user study conducted with S-Conart.
S-Conart is implemented as a Web application and consists of product information database, spatial-arrangement and listing representation subsystems, words presentation subsystem, and so forth. This system deals with Japanese sake (rice wine) as product items. The product information database uses PostgreSQL as a underlying DBMS, and stores sake data with 12 attributes and of 193 kinds as product data. Each subsystem is implemented with servlets and Java Server Pages (JSPs). In addition to them, the spatial-arrangement representation and words presentation subsystems also include an engine for calculating coordinates of product items or words as well as an applet for the spatial-arrangement style of presentation in the Web browser. Major features of S-Conart system are as follows:

1. Displaying products in spatial-arrangement style of presentation
2. Displaying products in listing style of presentation
3. Entering and viewing comments
4. Displaying words window in spatial presentation

S-Conart is intended to help the users make a concept-articulation type of purchase through the interaction with the system when they only have vague requirements on what they want. We expect both features of spatial-arrangement style of information presentation and verbal provision of scene information to be effective in supporting the users' concept articulation. The authors first conducted an experiment to examine the effect of spatial-arrangement style of information presentation. Through this user study, the authors argue that changing the content and/or presentation method of information provided by the system can bring an equivalent change to the human mental world, although it is in the different form from the human interaction.
Lastly, the paper includes related studies and mentions what should be addressed in the future.