ShopWithMe!: Collaborative Information Searching and Shopping for Online Retail

We present research on the development and evaluation of a collaborative search and shopping system for online retail tasks based on domain specific product requirements. We describe the design rationale for the system development and inclusion of collaborative features, including search, chat, clip-board, product suggestions, shared views, and shopping cart with a focus on how these features are used for collaborative online retail shopping and information searching and sharing. Our research goal is to understand whether collaborative search tools are useful in supporting actual collaborative online retail shopping tasks for experience goods. We describe system development and report findings from preliminary user studies of the system, using mixed methods analysis, with an emphasis on the qualitative findings. The findings highlight that systems for the online shopping domain can support searching, shared views, and group communication to aid in collaborative shopping for experience goods by improving information sharing among group members. Implications are that ecommerce systems, websites, and web apps should support collaboration based on product types.