Limpieza del filtro

Meziane and Nefti (2007) agree with other researchers that trust is a vital aspect of B2C e- Commerce and suggest that customers’ security and privacy concerns directly relate to trust. Customers often distrust e-vendors due to numerous perceived potential risks; the possibility of fraud, impersonality of the service, and the need to provide private information to potentially unsafe parties push customers away from engaging in online transactions (McKnight and Chervany, 2006; Kim et al., 2008a; Chang et al., 2013). As previously discussed, the situation is further aggravated by the fact that e-Commerce essentially lacks the traditional environmental and interpersonal cues relied upon in the physical world for trustworthiness assessment. The prevailing acknowledgement that trust is considered to be vital to the establishment of B2C relationships has brought increased recognition of the difficulty yet importance of developing mechanisms for supporting trust formation in e- Commerce (Grandison and Sloman, 2000). In their ‘call to arms’, Marsh and Meech (2000) went so far as to challenge website designers to start thinking about how trust can be facilitated in the initial (‘grabbing’) stages of online engagement, claiming that websites can be designed in such a way that trust is an integral part of the design rather than an afterthought.

Extensive research has subsequently been conducted in the e-Commerce domain to identify trust indicators that can be embedded within e-Commerce websites to engender user willingness to engage in online transactions (Jarvenpaa et al., 2000). Many researchers (e. g., Jarvenpaa et al., 2000; Egger, 2001; Riegelsberger and Sasse, 2001; Yang et al., 2005; Chen et al., 2010; Chang et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2013) either directly or indirectly illustrate that these trust indicators (known as trust triggers) can be effective in engendering

online trust trigger is an element of a website that acts as an indicator of the trustworthiness of the website (Lumsden, 2009). Chang and Chen (2008, p. 818) imply that trust triggers are “environmental cues” that influence customers’ intentions to engage in an online transaction. Lumsden and MacKay (2006) identify nine of the most generally agreed-upon trust triggers that are commonly used in e-Commerce, namely: customer testimonials and feedback; professional website design; branding; third party security seals; up-to-date technology and security measures; alternative channels of communication between consumers and the vendor; clearly stated policies and vendor information; consistent (professional) graphic design; and ease of navigation. They classify these trust triggers into two subsets – immediate and interaction-based trust triggers – where the latter requires extended interaction with the website in order to be exposed to the trust trigger whereas the former has influence on first sight of the website. Out of the listed trust triggers, ease of navigation and consistent professional graphic design can be classified as interaction-based; the remainder of the triggers belong to the immediate subset. Each trigger will be discussed in turn below.

Customer Testimonials and Feedback

Customer testimonials and feedback are becoming widely used by online vendors to engender consumer trust in the products and/or services that a vendor provides and consequently increase consumer purchase intention (Zhang et al., 2010; Ye et al., 2011; Utz et al., 2012). Feedback facilities and customer reviews are used by many online retail businesses – perhaps best known is Amazon.com, which was one of the first companies to publish user reviews on books (Lee and Yu, 2009; Mudambi and Schuff, 2010; Mudambi et al., 2014). Many e-Commerce consumers seek product reviews provided by other customers mainly because peer reviews are perceived as more trustworthy than the information supplied by e-vendors and experts (Smith et al., 2005). As some studies indicate, even negative consumer reviews can in some cases have a positive effect and increase purchase likelihood (Berger et al., 2010). Specifically, negative testimonials increase consumer awareness of products and services that were previously unknown; consumers are more likely to consider reviewed products than products that carry no reviews (Utz et al., 2012).

Online reviews typically consist of two components – star ratings and review text – where star ratings act as simple aggregate indicators of consumers’ overall satisfaction (Mudambi et al., 2014). Researchers recognise the importance of rating systems for online businesses, and studies show that retailers who get higher customer ratings can expect greater sales (Livingston, 2005; Resnick et al., 2006; Ye et al., 2011; Spillinger and Parush, 2012). That said, some studies indicate considerable inconsistency in customers’ interpretation of the rating scales, namely, “one person’s view of a “3” may be considerably different from another’s” (Mudambi et al., 2014, p. 1). Consequently, many online consumers consider

review comments that support numerical ratings as more informative and valuable when making a purchase decision (Utz et al., 2012).

Professional Website Design

Professional website design, as discussed in the literature, relates to the appearance of a website, including presentation of information and general layout (Wang and Emurian, 2005). Yang et al. (2005) suggest that the quality or professionalism of design of a website can significantly impact consumers’ first impression of a website and can increase their satisfaction and re-purchase intention. A professionally developed interface suggests that the vendor invested considerable amounts of money in producing the website. This is important because, as illustrated by Jarvenpaa et al. (2000) and Egger (2001), consumers are more willing to trust companies that invest more money back into their businesses. Satisfied online users are more likely to spend additional time browsing the website, revisit the website for further purchases and recommend the website to other customers (Zhang and von Dran, 2000). Consequently, high-quality websites that utilise trust-oriented interface design can expect greater levels of trust and higher revenues (Skarlatidou et al., 2013).

Branding

Studies suggest that branding plays an influential role in terms of customers’ trust towards vendors, both on- and offline (Jarvenpaa et al., 2000; Ha, 2004; Broutsou and Fitsilis, 2012). Consumers believe that if a company is mature and large in size, then it is trustworthy because the trust and business of previous customers will have served as a foundation for the company's growth (Jarvenpaa et al., 2000; Chakraborty et al., 2010; Fulmer and Gelfand, 2011; Broutsou and Fitsilis, 2012). Lohse and Spiller (1998) also argue that the size of the company in the offline world affects customers’ perceptions of the company’s online business. This suggests that larger, more recognised and established brands will instil greater levels of trust among customers when online.

Perceived vendor reputation exerts particularly high influence on initial trust formation (Koufaris and Hampton-Sosa, 2004). New customers who have not previously visited a website will be more willing to engage in an online transaction with a reputable e-vendor (Chakraborty et al., 2010). As proposed by Jarvenpaa et al. (2000), less-known online vendors might be able to establish and promote their reputation by describing their history, stating their policies, and including customer testimonials and feedback “regarding the quality, value, and efficiency of their service” (ibid, p. 65).

Third Party Security Seals

Despite the fact that B2C e-Commerce is rapidly growing, customers’ privacy, security and business integrity concerns remain the main bottlenecks affecting ongoing development of e-

2007; Mascha et al., 2011; Hartono et al., 2014). To resolve such customer concerns, third- party seals of approval certification programs were introduced by the e-Commerce industry (Moores, 2005; Kim and Kim, 2011). Third-party assurance seals, also referred to as trust seals, are provided to online vendors by independent third parties, such as accountants, banks or consumer unions (Noteberg et al., 2003). The providers of the seals assure that online vendors adopt and comply with fair information practices, privacy policies, security, business practices integrity, etc. depending on the seal function. In order to acquire a seal of approval, vendors typically need to write a privacy policy which is then submitted to the organisation providing the seal for review and approval. The cost of acquiring a trust seal will commonly depend on the applicants’ annual income, but different seal providers apply different rates and often include additional charges for inspection of applicants’ websites (e.g., CPA WebTrust). The trust seals themselves are represented with graphics that have a click-to-verify function: this ensures that when the seal graphic is clicked the customer is navigated to the validation page that provides the description of the seal program and outlines the compliance procedure (Moores and Dhillon, 2003). The most commonly used third-party assurance seals in e-Commerce include TRUSTe, VeriSign, BBBOnline, and WebTrust (example graphics are shown in Figure 2.3 below).

Figure 2.3: Example graphics of commonly used e-Commerce third-party seals of assurance.

Although third-party seals of approval are adopted by online vendors to engender customers’ trust, research on trust seals provides conflicting results regarding whether such seals actually engender trust and influence customers’ purchase intentions (Kim et al., 2008b; Lowry et al., 2008). A large number of studies propose that trust seals have a strong impact on customer trust in online vendors (e.g., Noteberg et al., 2003; Rifon et al., 2005; Aiken and Boush, 2006; Kaihong and Mingxia, 2007). In contrast, other studies suggest that the level of consumer recognition of seals is relatively low (Head and Hassanein, 2002; Moores, 2005) and seals of approval do not influence customers’ purchase intentions (Belanger et al., 2002; Mcknight et al., 2004; Utz et al., 2012). Despite the fact that the seals of approval are largely used by e-Commerce vendors (Jiang et al., 2008), studies have shown that customers often fail to understand and appreciate their role in privacy, security or business integrity assurance and any professional-looking graphic can be confused with an official third-party seal of assurance (Moores, 2005; Utz et al., 2012). To investigate the level of customer

recognition, Moores (2005) compared users’ reactions to three official privacy seals with a fictitious seal graphic. The results showed that the customers identified a fictitious seal to be an official seal of approval. Moores suggests that online vendors fail to display privacy seals prominently enough to aid user recognition of the official graphics and increase customers’ education about the role of seals in engendering trust. Other studies indicate that customers do not actually spend the time necessary to check third-party seal certificates because they have no trust in the assurance seals themselves (Head and Hassanein, 2002). In addition, the presence of a privacy assurance seal can have a negative effect on consumer trust; customers sometimes view their presence as vendors’ attempt to create an illusion of privacy protection (Mcknight et al., 2004). When making a purchase decision, customers often value aesthetic aspects of a website (e.g., website design, convenience, ease of use, cosmetics) (Belanger et al., 2002) and customer testimonials (Utz et al., 2012) more than the presence of seals of approval. To enhance the understanding of how trust seals affect customer trust, some studies have investigated whether the stage at which a seal is encountered has any effect on the extent to which trust seals influence customers (Head and Hassanein, 2002; Mcknight et al., 2004). Head and Hassanein (2002) define four stages of the trust building lifecycle, namely chaos, establish, enhance and maintain. During the chaos phase, a customer is unaware of a vendor or is untrusting; during the establish stage, the customer becomes aware of the vendor by browsing the vendor’s website and seeking information; at the enhance stage, the customer engages in and completes a transaction; and at the maintain stage the customer performs regular successful transactions with a given vendor. Using this trust-building model, Head and Hassanein (2002) showed that trust seals can be more influential during the establish and enhance trust-building phases, when the customers seek information about the vendor and start engaging in the first transactions. In contrast, during the maintain stage, when customers have become familiar with the vendor, the trust seals become unimportant to the customers. Contradicting this discovery, Mcknight et al. (2004) showed that privacy seals of approval have no influence on customers’ trust even at an early stage of trust building.

Due to conflicting evidence regarding whether third-party seals of approval have a positive effect on trust, researchers are trying to identify the root cause of the inconsistencies in findings and what is actually influencing the effectiveness of seals. Zhang (2005) examined whether there is a connection between types of seals and their trust-engendering effect on different product types. He used four different seals to address (1) information privacy, (2) information security, (3) reliability issues, and (4) money back guarantee and studied two product types (1) commodity (e.g., oil, paper clips) and (2) look-and-feel (e.g., suits, homes). Commodity products’ quality can be inferred from limited information whereas look-and-feel products’ quality is more subjective and can be hard to assess without direct access to the

type, some seals were more effective than others; reliability-assurance seals were the most effective across all product types. To take this further, Hu et al. (2010) explored whether combining several assurance functions (privacy, security and transaction-integrity) in one seal would have a greater effect on engendering customers’ trust online. The results of their study demonstrated that seals with multiple functions did not necessarily have greater effect than seals that carried a single function. Interestingly, the study suggested that the privacy function had a weakening effect when it was combined with any other assurance functions. This suggests that combining several roles in one label can have a detrimental effect and the functions to be combined have to be selected and evaluated very carefully. Studies also suggest that educating customers about third-party assurance seals can increase customers’ awareness of the importance of the seals (Kim et al., 2008b) and that customers who have some knowledge are more willing to buy when seals are present (Hu et al., 2001).

Up-to Date Technology

The up-to date technology trust trigger typically manifests through the use of secure internet protocols for private/secure transactions, data encryption and authentication techniques (Lumsden, 2009; Kim et al., 2010). Customers can identify this trigger when making a purchase by the presence of a padlock in a corner of the browser and “https” in front of the current page address. Although various security mechanisms and measures have been developed to minimise the risks of online transactions, recent studies report that 95% of surveyed customers are to some extent concerned about privacy of their information and six in ten survey respondents fear theft of their credit card details (Kim et al., 2010).

The importance of up-to date technology as a trigger for trust directly relates to customers’ concerns regarding the privacy of transactions (Büyüközkan et al., 2010). Although it might be assumed that consumers rely on the presence of the padlock symbol to assure them of the safety of their payment details, studies have shown that a large number of customers are not actively searching for this trust trigger when making a purchase online (Lumsden, 2009). Whilst this may suggest a general lack of consumer awareness of the technical aspects of online transaction and electronic payment security, studies indicate that perceived technical protection is strongly associated with perceived security and consumers’ perceived trust (Kim et al., 2010). Thus, to engender and maintain customer trust, it is essential that e-vendors employ effective up-to date mechanisms for secure transactions and ensure privacy of personal customer data (Hasan and Abuelrub, 2011).

Egger (2001, p. 322) provides a list of recommendations that can be adopted by e-vendors to address customers’ security concerns:

 “List the measures taken to ensure that data is transferred, processed and stored securely;

 Provide prominent links to the security policy;

 Mention what hardware and software solutions are used: provide external links to providers;

 Complement browser feedback with text to inform users that they are on a secure page; [and]

 Provide several payment options.”

Alternative Channels of Communication

Alternative channels of communication on a website typically refer to the provision of a company’s address details and/or a phone number such that consumers can communicate with the vendor via more than just email (Egger, 2001; Fogg et al., 2001; Araujo and Araujo, 2003; Chen and Dhillon, 2003; Parasuraman et al., 2005). Yang et al. (2005) state the importance of not only online but also offline channels of communication in engendering trust. Availability of an address or a phone number suggests that the vendor exists in the offline world and can be reached through more traditional means of communication. Via their qualitative credibility evaluation of two live websites conducted with 2,684 participants, Fogg et al. (2002, p. 41) discovered that “a Web site wins credibility points by giving information about the organization behind the Web site: who they are, what they do, and how to contact them”. Researchers further concluded that availability of contact details and photographs of people behind the company provide website customers with a real-world feeling. More recent studies also confirm that traditional offline channels of communication are still widely used by online consumers (van Dijk et al., 2007), meaning that it is important for e-vendors to consider offering both online and offline communication channels to their customers (Sivaji et al., 2011).

Consistent Graphic Design and Ease of Navigation

These two trust triggers require user interaction with the website in order to influence trust or distrust. In the case of e-Commerce, since the website is sometimes the only means of communication between an e-vendor and its customers (Chen and Dhillon, 2003), the website’s appearance and ease of interaction are critical factors that contribute to vendor’s credibility and trustworthiness (Fogg et al., 2002). Efficient navigation schemes, organized layouts and consistent graphic design aid in developing trust towards e-vendors (Koufaris and Hampton-Sosa, 2004; Yang et al., 2005), increase consumer sense of control (Chen and Dhillon, 2003), positively affect perceived usefulness of the website (Kim, 2012), improve the consumer shopping experience (Sivaji et al., 2011), and significantly impact consumer purchase intentions (Zhu et al., 2011).