Panagiota Papadopoulou

Trust and relationship building in electronic commerce

In e‐commerce, trust becomes an essential prerequisite for customer relationship building. Drawn from established theoretical work on trust and relationship marketing, a model is proposed aiming to help in highlighting the differences between traditional and e‐commerce and to facilitate thinking as to how trust can be built in virtual environments. Conceptualized in the context of an electronic servicescape, the model helps to demonstrate how agent and virtual reality technologies can facilitate the expressiveness required for the formation of trust through iterative interaction with promises being made, enabled and fulfilled.

Applying virtual reality for trust-building e-commerce environments

The application of virtual reality in e-commerce has enormous potential for transforming online shopping into a real-world equivalent. However, the growing research interest focuses on virtual reality technology adoption for the development of e-commerce environments without addressing social and behavioral facets of online shopping such as trust. At the same time, trust is a critical success factor for e-commerce and remains an open issue as to how it can be accomplished within an online store. This paper shows that the use of virtual reality for online shopping environments offers an advanced customer experience compared to conventional web stores and enables the formation of customer trust. The paper presents a prototype virtual shopping mall environment, designed on principles derived by an empirically tested model for building trust in e-commerce. The environment is evaluated with an empirical study providing evidence and explaining that a virtual reality shopping environment would be preferred by customers over a conventional web store and would facilitate the assessment of the e-vendor’s trustworthiness.

What Is Trust in E-Government? A Proposed Typology

Trust in e-government is of vital importance for the effective adoption and use of electronic public services. Understanding the concept of trust and the different types it involves in the e-government context is a key challenge for both research and practice. Aiming to address this need, this paper proposes a parsimonious yet comprehensive typology of trust in e-government. Trust in e-government is analyzed into seven different types conceptualized around the different targets they are related to. Each trust type is further delineated into its composing dimensions and the approach by which it can enabled. The paper continues to present an example of the practical applicability of the proposed typology by showing how the identified types of trust have been addressed in an online taxation portal.

The effect of colors of e-commerce websites on consumer mood, memorization and buying intention

This paper aims at studying the effect of the colors of e-commerce websites on consumer mood, memorization and buying intention. On the basis of a literature review a conceptual model is proposed, showing the effects of the color of e-commerce websites and specifically of its components, hue and brightness on the behavioral responses of the consumer, memorization and buying intention. These responses are conveyed by mood. Data collection was carried out during a laboratory experiment in order to control for the measurement of the colored appearance of e-commerce websites. Participants visited one of the eight versions of a website designed for the research, selling music CDs. Data analysis using ANOVA, regressions and general linear models show a significant effect of color on memorization, conveyed by mood. The interaction of hue and brightness, using chromatic colors for the background and foreground supports memorization and buying intention, when contrast is based on low brightness. A negative mood infers better memorization but a decreasing buying intention. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

β-Orcinol Metabolites from the Lichen Hypotrachyna revoluta

Four new β-orcinol metabolites, hypotrachynic acid (1), deoxystictic acid (2), cryptostictinolide (3) and 8 -methylconstictic acid (4) along with the metabolites 8 -methylstictic acid (5), 8 -methylmenegazziaic acid (6), stictic acid (7), 8 -ethylstictic acid (8) and atranorin (9), that have been previously described, were isolated for the first time from the tissue extracts of the lichen Hypotrachyna revoluta (Florke) Hale. The structures of the new metabolites were elucidated on the basis of extensive spectroscopic analyses. Radical scavenging activity (RSA) of the metabolites isolated in adequate amounts, was evaluated using luminol chemiluminescence and comparison with Trolox®.

Integrating Usability Engineering for Designing the Web Experience: Methodologies and Principles

Integrating Usability Engineering for Designing the Web Experience: Methodologies and Principles provides a link between theoretical research and Web engineering, presenting a more holistic approach to Internet serviceability. Containing analysis from leading international experts, this publication offers new insights on applications that enable or facilitate the development of usable Web systems.Support to website developers without formal training in human-computer interaction that enable them to conduct their own usability evaluations would radically advance integration of usability engineering in web development. This chapter presents experiences from usability evaluations conducted by developers and results from an empirical study of means to support non-experts in identifying usability problems. A group of software developers who were novices in usability engineering analyzed a usability test session with the task of identifying usability problems experienced by the user. In their analysis they employed a simple one-page tool that has been developed to support identification of usability problems. The non-experts were able to conduct a well-organized usability evaluation and identify a reasonable amount of usability problems with a performance that was comparable to usability experts.

Enabling trust formation within agent-mediated virtual environments

In e-commerce, the role of trust becomes vital for establishing and maintaining customer relationships. Drawing from established theoretical work on trust and relationship marketing, this paper synthesises a series of trust constructs, determinant variables and trust building processes, and proposes a framework for the formation of trust in customer-business relationships. The framework is conceptualised in the context of an electronic servicescape, where trust is formed through iterative interactions with promises being made, enabled and fulfilled. Based on this framework, the paper illustrates how the application of agent and virtual reality technologies can provide the environment and facilitate the expressiveness demanded by such a servicescape.

The Effect of E-Commerce Websites' Colors on Customer Trust

Establishing customer trust in an online vendor requires the provision of an environment in which customers can overcome their fear and reluctance about shopping transactions by forming trust and positive perceptions about the online vendor. This paper studies the impact of the colors of e-commerce websites, as an atmospheric variable of the interface, on customer trust. The effect of the colors of e-commerce websites on customer trust has only been indirectly examined in terms of website characteristics, such as website quality and usability, where color is viewed as a key interface attribute. Thus, the relationship between color itself and trust remains largely under investigated. To address this gap, this paper presents an exploratory qualitative study on how customers develop trust in an online vendor, as a result of the colors of the e-commerce website. The empirical findings provide theoretical and practical implications regarding the effect of web stores color on trust.

Essential Oil Composition of two Greek Echinops species: E. graecus Miller and E. ritro L.

Abstract The essential oils from the fresh inforescences of Echinops graecus and E. ritro were analyzed by GC and GC/MS. Methyl chavicol (42.5%) was the dominant component of E. graecus oil. The oil of E. ritro showed (E)-2-hexenal (21.4%), 1,8-cineole (16.3%) and p-cymene (12.2%) as the major constituents.

Chromatic Scales on Our Eyes: How User Trust in a Website Can Be Altered by Color via Emotion

Establishing customer trust on an e-commerce website possibly requires the provision of an environment in which customers can overcome their fear and reluctance about shopping transactions by forming trust and positive perceptions about the online vendor. This research concentrates on color as a central factor in the design of web pages that enhance users’ positive emotional reactions as well as trust states and behaviors. Drawing on existing theories and empirical findings in the environmental psychology, human-computer interaction, as well as in the marketing and information systems research literature, a research model is developed to explain the relationships among background and foreground colors of a webpage, induced emotional responses in users, and users’ trust toward the website as mediated by users’ emotional states. A laboratory experiment was conducted to test the model and its associated hypotheses. This permitted assessment of the influence of background and foreground colors on user emotions and trust under varying brightness and saturation levels. Sixteen different graphic charts were evaluated based on various contrast ratios. We use the PAD (Pleasure Arousal Dominance) scale from Mehrabian and Russell (1974) and find that color can increase arousal, leading to stronger trust. Color leads to higher trust levels when arousal states are present at a high level. Our empirical findings provide valuable theoretical and practical implications regarding the effect of websites color on trust.