Working Papers,
Copenhagen Business School, Department of Informatics

Abstract: In this paper we present a cost effective and simple procedure for evaluating company web sites. Our assumption is that such sites are places for companies’ self-presentation and that customers are readers of these texts. Web site texts with narrative qualities, e.g. scenes, actors, acts, initiate the customers’ imagination and narrative mind and hence their decision making. These ideas are investigated in a qualitative study of two companies’ self-presentation as future work places for students. The results demonstrate that the students choose the company that has a web site with rich narrative qualities above the company that has a web site with good graphical appearance, but poor narrative qualities. In conclusion, we suggest that user centred evaluation of commercial web sites by using the suggested method can pay attention to deep, narrative structures in both the company’s self-presentation and the customers’ reading of the web site texts.

Keywords: Competitive advantage; decision-making; dramas; imagination; narratives; storytelling; web-design

JEL-codes: O30

20 pages, September 20, 2004

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