The effect of trust signals on online retailer´s sales: An example of Taobao

The signals released by the online retailer can influence the consumers´ trust in the retailer, and then, make an impact on consumer´s purchase intention. This research will directly examine the effect of trust signals on online retailers´ sales. The data are collected from Taobao (www.taobao.com), and contain 400 samples unit with product and four categories. With linear regression model, this research finds that: 1) there is correlation between the number of signals and product´s sales; 2) among the 13 signals introduced into the model, signals which indicate ability of retailers, such as “level of store”, can significantly and positively influence product´s sales, the influence of other kinds of signals is very little or even no; 3) price of product can significantly moderate the effect above; 4) compared with the most important factor which can influence the product´s sales online - word of mouth (WOM), even though the influence is not as significant as WOM, trust signal can be another important indicator to affect sales.