Kathryn M. Kimery

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

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.

Markets and Constituencies: An Alternative View of the Marketing Concept

Abstract Several researchers have addressed questions concerning the utility of a business philosophy grounded in the marketing concept. The authors first present a review of the marketing concept literature and offer arguments in support of the appropriateness of a market orientation for most business enterprises. Second, a reconceptualization of the marketing concept, based on a long-term, multiple constituency approach, is presented as both a more accurate description of how firms interact with their markets and as a prescriptive model for more effective business orientation. Finally, a framework is presented that models the implementation of the marketing concept into specific strategies for interacting with various sectors of the firm’s environment.

Signals of Trustworthiness in E-Commerce: Consumer Understanding of Third-Party Assurance Seals

Signaling theory provides the framework to address three main research questions: (1) How accurately do consumers notice and recollect TPA seals on retail Web sites? (2) How familiar are consumers with major TPA seals? and (3) How accurately do consumers understand the assurances represented by the TPA seals? Results of this study of three major TPA seals (TRUSTe, BBBOnLine Reliability, and VeriSign) reveal that subjects have poor recall of TPA seals viewed on a Web site, have limited familiarity with TPA programs, and have incomplete and largely inaccurate perceptions of the assurances that TPA seals represent. These results suggest that TPA seals may not fulfill their potential to influence consumer trust in e-commerce because the signals are not noticed on merchant Web sites or adequately understood by consumers.