Presentation at the 2012 Gmunden NeuroIS Retreat, Austria, June 2012

1. Consumers' Online Cognitive
Scripts: A Neurophysiological
Approach
Sylvain Sénécal (HEC Montréal)
Pierre-Majorique Léger (HEC Montréal)
Marc Fredette (HEC Montréal)
René Riedl (University of Linz)
Gmunden Retreat on NeuroIS 2012
Gmunden, Austria, June 3-6

2. Tech3Lab
Insfrastructure financing
Operational financing
Scientific partners

3. Group experimental room

4. Group experimental room

5. Individual experimental room

6. Individual experimental room

8. Cognitive Script
• “Coherent sequence of events expected by the
individual, involving him either as a participant or as an
observer” (Abelson 1976)
• “Predetermined, stereotyped sequence of actions that
define a well-known situation.” (Shank and Abelson
1977)
• Basically, it allows people to understand and behave
appropriately in a particular situation (Abelson 1981).
• Experts form more elaborate, distinctive, contingent,
and hypothetical scripts than novices (Leong et al.
1989; Martin 1991)

9. Research Objectives
1. Validate if consumers activate cognitive scripts
when shopping online;
2. Understand how cognitive scripts are formed by
consumers over multiple shopping trips;
3. Investigate how consumers activating different
cognitive scripts respond when facing a novel
shopping environment (e.g., a new store).

10. Potential Contributions
• To theory:
– Better understand script activation over multiple
interactions
– Script and Self-service technology
• To practice:
– Help managers provide satisfying online experiences
– Potentially, locking-in consumers with easier to learn
websites (Johnson and Bellman 2003).

11. Cognitive Script and Neuroscience
• When encountering a situation, the brain tries to match the
input information (e.g., Burger King) with a similar
representation existing in memory (Barr 2009).
• By activating a certain analogy, information that is associated
with this analogy in memory is triggered, generating a
prediction of what to expect next (Bar 2009, Bar and Neta
2008).
• Hence, cognitive scripts could be at the basis of human brain
activity and consequently human behaviors
• “Information encoded in our memory guides and sometimes
dictates our future behavior. One can look at our experience
as stored in memory as scripts.” (Bar 2009, p.1239)

12. Hypotheses
• H1: Consumers, whose script was formed during
repeated visits to a single website (intrascript
consumers), will possess a different script than
those whose script was formed during single visits
to different websites (interscript consumers).

13. Neurophysiological differences between
Novices and Experts
Hill and Schneider, 2006

14. Hypotheses
• H2: When revisiting the website, intrascript
consumers will more use automatic processing.
• H3: When visiting a new and dissimilar website,
intrascript consumers will use more controlled
processing.

15. Hypotheses
• H4: When visiting a new and dissimilar website,
interscript consumers will have more positive
attitudes toward the website than intrascript
consumers.

16. Method
• Pretest conducted in Summer 2011
• Main study
– Lab expriment
– Subjects: No online music purchase experience
– Data collected in March - April 2012
– Data analysis: ongoing

17. Method – Main study
• Questionnaire 1
– « Online music purchase » script elicitation 1
– List of 10 songs
• Random assignment to Group A (same site) or B (different
sites)
– Purchase task: One song per website (1 hour and/or 10 websites
max.)
• Questionnaire 2
– « Online music purchase » script elicitation 2
– Website evaluation (Bressolles and Nantel 2008)
– Demographics

18. Experimental Design
One Hour (maximum)
Intrascript A A A A A A A A A A L Questionnaire
Interscript B C D E F G H I J K L Questionnaire

20. Measures
• Neurophysiological
– Electroencephalography (EEG) and Heart Rate (HR)
• B-Alert® X10
• EEG based engagement index (Berka 2007): sleep onset,
distraction, low engagement, and high engagement.
• EEG based workload index
– Electrodermal response (EDR)
• Procomp Infinity (Thought Technology)
• Self-reported
– Website evaluation (Bressolles and Nantel 2008)
• Aesthetics, Ease of Use, Information Quality,
Interactivity/Personalisation

21. Pretest and Main Study
B-Alert EEG Headset

22. Results
• Pre-test done in Summer 2011 with 6 subjects.
• Real test done in March-April 2012 with 20
subjects.
• Once the data are processed, we still have about
20 measures per subject per thousandth of second
(approx. 75,000,000 observations per subject).
• Per subject, we have approx. 250Mo of data
(unstructured data excluded)

23. Description des données

25. H1 : Consumers, whose script was formed during repeated visits to a single website
(intrascript consumers), will possess a different script than those whose script was
formed during single visits to different websites (interscript consumers).
• Two independent judges coded each participant’s initial
and final scripts (Intercoder reliability coefficient 0.97)
• Average number of events between the initial and final
script:
– Intrascript condition : from 5.70 to 5.65 events
– Interscript condition : from from 7.18 to 7.55 events
– Difference in variation (-0.05 vs. 0.37) was not statistically
significant based on a Mann-Whitney test (n1=10 and
n2=11)

26. H2: When revisiting the website, intrascript consumers will more use automatic
processing.
H3: When visiting a new and dissimilar website, intrascript consumers will use more
controlled processing.
Intrascript group Interscript group
N = 14

27. H4 : When visiting a new and dissimilar website, interscript consumers will have more
positive attitudes toward the website than intrascript consumers.
N = 21

28. Next step