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.