E-tailer website attributes and trust: understanding the role of online reviews

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of an experimental study designed to better understand the role of online product reviews, both valence and volume, in the formation of initial online trust during a consumer’s exploratory stage with an e-tailer. This is done within the context of simultaneously varying e-tailer reputation and product type.

Participants take part in a conjoint task that involves viewing fictitious web pages and indicating their level of trust in using the site to purchase the product displayed. The web pages are developed by manipulating four attributes (e-tailer reputation, product type, summary product star rating and number of online reviews) according to a full factorial design. Conjoint models are estimated to determine the relative influence of each attribute on trust perceptions, the significance of selected two-way interactions among the four attributes, and potential moderating effects of varied prior online experiences, including previous usage frequency of online reviews.

Results reveal that e-tailer reputation has the greatest impact on initial trust perceptions, followed by the summary review star rating of the product. Significant two-way interactions show that a large number of reviews enhance the effect of a positive summary review on trust while shopping for high priced experience products diminishes the positive influence of e-tailer reputation. Prior online experiences moderate the relationship between these website attributes and perceived trust by interacting with the two strongest trust cues in the model. The effects of these attributes on trust perceptions are less for those with higher levels of prior online experiences.

The study uses conjoint analysis, which requires participants to implicitly “tradeoff” among website attributes in making overall judgments about e-tailer trustworthiness. Consequently, the relative influence of online reviews (both valence and volume) on initial trust perceptions is derived empirically in a realistic setting that involves online shopping contexts with different risk (by varying product type). Moreover, the authors are able to estimate interaction effects. A significant interaction between summary product star rating and number of reviews implies that online review volume may be more important to perceived e-tailer trustworthiness than earlier studies suggest.