홈페이지 대기시간이 추가적이 웹사이트 탐색활동에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구

As Internet is becoming the communication media and distribution channel connecting between online marketing manager and customer, the waiting time of website is threatening to obtain goals of Internet companies through distorting customers' search behavior. Especially, the waiting time of home page as a entrance of website is more important than any other pages. The focus of this study is to examine the effect of waiting time of home page on the customers' additional search level.For the purpose of hypothesis testing, the waiting time of a website's(in Korea) home page was measured by 10 minute interval for about 3 days by Winibiz.ocm(Internet access test company in Korea) and this data was joined to web log file during the same period of measuring waiting time. The major meaningful results are as follows. First, The higher the waiting time of home page, the higher the possibility of quitting search even though customer continues to search beyond home page. If the waiting time of home page is increased by 1 second, the additional search level is decreased by about 4%(page viewed) and 3%(duration time) separately. Second, more importantly high involvement customers to a website are doing more limited additional search than low involvement customers.Many Internet companies manage waiting time problem operationally by handling the capacity of server and line according to website traffic. But this operational management has some disadvantages in the view of time, cost and flexibility. So this method need to be supplemented by the customers' perceptual management to the waiting time. This study suggests that perceptual and marketing management to waiting time includes presentation of waiting time information, administration of customer attribution to waiting time and differentiated offering of waiting time.