The use of e-signatures for commercial advertising on the internet

In the last few years, there has been a steady increase in the use of e -signatures as a passive Electronic Commerce and marketing tool. However, there has been no formal research to examine the effectiveness of e -signatures from the theoretical and technical perspectives.

Based on a combination of the theories of involvement, motivation, consumer behaviour and advertising and the field experience of researchers, six attributes of e -signatures were identified. A between subject 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 factorial experimental design was conducted. The major goal of the study was to identify the relative effect and advertising effectiveness of the following six signature features: status, incentives, gender, action/doing, ethnicity and pictures/graphics.

Paradigmatic changes in technology and the business world have forced engineers, managers and researchers alike to develop new skills for innovative, creative, 'out -of -box' thinking. Contributions made by this research include: 1) it helps in understanding the unique features of Internet -based consumer research and 2) it makes tools and techniques previously not well known to traditional consumer researchers publicly available, such as automatic email capture JavaScript, web access log analysis and Yates' Neural Network factorial design and analysis.