Third-party assurances: the road to trust in online retailing

Author

Kimery, Kathryn M. ; McCord, Mary

Author_Institution

Dept. of Manage., Kansas State Univ., USA

fYear

2002

fDate

7-10 Jan. 2002

Abstract

Consumer trust of Internet vendors is a major factor influencing the success of e-commerce. To enhance consumer trust, many e-retailers are experimenting with various trust-building strategies, including participation in third party assurance programs. The study presents a model describing the relationship between trust and online purchasing, as well as related relationships with antecedents to both trust and purchasing: third-party assurances, individual disposition to trust, perceived risk of purchasing online from a particular Web merchant, and attitude toward a particular Web merchant. Four manipulations of a simulated retail Web site were used to test nine model-derived hypotheses. Data were collected and analyzed from a pilot study of 164 subjects. The initial results lend tentative support to six of the nine hypotheses, but not those postulating relationships between assurance seals and trust in e-retailers.

Keywords

Internet; data privacy; electronic commerce; information resources; retail data processing; risk management; Internet vendors; Web merchant; assurance seals; attitude; consumer trust; e-commerce; e-retailers; model-derived hypotheses; online purchasing; online retailing trust; perceived risk; pilot study; simulated retail Web site; third-party assurances; trust-building strategies; Computer industry; Data analysis; Electronic commerce; Electronic equipment testing; Internet; Management information systems; Marketing and sales; Seals; Security; System testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

System Sciences, 2002. HICSS. Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7695-1435-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HICSS.2002.994158

Filename

994158