Affording Cultural and Social Presence in E-Marketing

Abstract

This chapter discusses the relationships among several concepts important to Web design, marketing communications and consumer behavior. Originally from psychology literature, the concept of affordances, the result of interaction between a human and an object, has emerged in product design literature. This chapter extends the concept to design of mediated environments, stressing detailed social and cultural contextual elements and potential behaviors. Vividness and interactivity in mediated environments are requisite qualities for inducing a sense of presence, consumers’ perception on some level that a mediated environment is non-mediated. Well-designed mediated environments afford consumers online opportunities to modify relationships with their environments.