Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
2.2.2 Effectiveness of External Information
Considering the limitations of traditional social psychological approaches, we next
examine how external information may be used by potential buyers to evaluate a
seller's competence, benevolence, and integrity. For example, employing a large-
scale social survey, Fogg et al. (
2003
) refined component approaches and identified
“name recognition and reputation” as one of 18 categories of information clues for
respondents. Trust in a website increases if the site operator's name is well known
in the real world, and this effect is especially apparent in e-commerce stores. In fact,
Fogg et al. (
2003
) recognized that it is impossible to control reputation and other
such external information solely through enrichment and sophistication of the
internal components of a website and called for more research on the effect of
external information on trust.
Noting the importance of external information, some previous studies have
investigated the effect of third party certificates, consumer feedback, and advertis-
ing reputation. However, these studies have mainly focused on the trust-building
effects of such information when it is presented on the website. For example,
Cheskin Research (
1999
,
2000
) evaluated the effectiveness of TRUSTe seals in
trust building (see also McKnight and Chervany (
2001
)). Similar approaches have
been applied to BBB online (Cheskin Research and Studio Archetype/Sapient
1999
; Cheskin Research
2000
; McKnight and Chervany
2001
), WebTrust
(McKnight and Chervany
2001
; Kover et al.
2000a
,
b
), and VeriSign (Cheskin
Research and Studio Archetype/Sapient
1999
; Cheskin Research
2000
; McKnight
and Chervany
2001
). Other studies have investigated the effect of advertising
reputation (Cheskin Research and Studio Archetype/Sapient
1999
; Cheskin
Research
2000
; McKnight and Chervany
2001
; Jarvenpaa et al.
2000
), customer
feedback (Lim et al.
2006
,
2001
), and portal affiliation (Lim et al.
2006
). Although
these previous studies concern the effectiveness of the credibility of third parties or
customer feedback rather than self-report by the e-commerce store, they are still
similar to the traditional social psychological model in that they focus on third party
certification or customer feedback presented on the e-commerce website.
Although these studies are important in understanding how website design and
information presentation affect trust building, it must be noted that potential buyers
do not judge the trustworthiness of an e-commerce site only from the information
presented on it. When people make purchases via the Internet, they can collect
external information on e-commerce stores through any number of search engines,
word of mouth sites, bulletin boards, and blogs. To build trust in e-commerce, it
should be important to employ these wide networks of reputation and recommen-
dation information appropriately. As mentioned above, it is difficult for potential
buyers to penetrate the website's disguise with fake certification seals or forged
customer feedback because of the information asymmetry in the e-commerce
situation. When the internal components of the website cannot serve as stable
signals of trustworthiness, potential buyers may also search for information outside
the website to judge its trustworthiness. That is, potential buyers not only gather
