Cognitive Lock-In Effects on Consumer Purchase Intentions in the Context of B2C Web Sites

The perspective of power law of practice and human capital model asserts that cognitive search costs, cognitive transaction costs, and cognitive switching costs are three lock-in mechanisms that a business-to-consumer (B2C) Web site holds to retain customers. Whether the ability of customer value or the lock-in mechanism is more dominant for retaining online shoppers has received recent attention, but remains unresolved in the literature. This study sheds light on perceived value and cognitive lock-in to develop a research model to predict consumer purchase intentions. Empirical results obtained from a survey of customers of a B2C Web site are used to examine the proposed model. Implications of cognitive lock-in and product cues for increasing purchase intentions are also discussed.