Meeting Consumers Needs in e-Commerce: The OCHN

Meeting consumers needs has been a key focus of every business for many years. However, the rise of e-commerce has opened up businesses to a whole new section of consumers with different wants a needs.

The Online Consumer's Hierarchy of Needs (OCHN) is a framework developed by Valacich, Parboteeah and Wells (2007) in order to create a standard framework for e-commerce businesses so that they can adequately meet the needs of their customers.

Developed from Maslow's highly regarded Hierarchy of Needs, the OCHN divides online consumer's needs into three distinct categories; Structural Firmness, Functional Convenience and Representational Delight (Valacich, Parboteeah and Wells, 2007).

For each category, there is a minimum level of compliance that must be reached in order for consumers to use the website in question and this makes up the horizontal section of the framework and is named the 'Zone of Intolerance'. The remainder of the framework is divided into the same three categories, however this section is not essential to a consumer purchasing, but rather increases the satisfaction consumers have with the website or web page (see Figure 1).

Figure 1       The Online Consumer Hierarchy of Needs

Source: Valacich, Parboteeah and Wells (2007)

The theory is expanded upon further through the consideration of differing websites. These are classified as Utilitarian sites (sites designed to be practical rather than attractive), Hedonic sites (sites designed for attractiveness) and Hybrid sites (sites that require to both be attractive and practical) and the distribution of these three competencies differ depending on the type of website it is applied to (See figure 2).

Figure 2       The OCHN for differing websites

Source: Valacich, Parboteeah and Wells (2007)

While utilitarian sites are more heavily reliant on structural firmness, hedonistic sites benefit more heavily from improved representational delight. Hybrid sites, depicted in figure 2 as a even split, are in actual fact dependant on their exact positioning, which can be more closely related to either utilitarian or hedonic.

The OCHN framework, while not comprehensive, give an indication to e-commerce business on the driving factors behind their consumers motivation to use their site above their competition, and so can be a useful tool when deciding where exactly to invest when re-designing or updating their online platform.

For more information on the OCEN read Valacich, Parboteeah and Wells (2007).

Reference: Valacich JS, Parboteeah DV and Wells JD (2007) “The online consumer’s hierarchy of needs”, Communications of the ACM, Vol 50, No 9, p84-90