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B2C
The effect of web communities on e-commerce
consumers’ initial trust in B2C websites
e-commerce websites
791
Malaika Brengman
Department of Business, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium, and
Farhod P. Karimov
Department of Business, Westminster International University in Tashkent,
Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test the effectiveness of the mere integration of social
network applications to provide a signal concerning the “trustworthiness” of an unfamiliar e-vendor in
order to enhance subsequent purchase intentions.
Design/methodology/approach – To investigate the impact of web communities on consumers’
initial trust beliefs (i.e. ability, benevolence and integrity), a 2 £ 3 between-subjects full factorial online
experiment was carried out, using a fictitious web site for a gift gadgets selling company, manipulating
it for inclusion or exclusion of a “social networking site”, and for inclusion or exclusion of “a corporate
blog (text only blog, photo and text blog, or no blog)”. Data were obtained from 226 online shoppers.
Findings – Although the authors could not reveal any effects of the integration of social network
applications on “ability” beliefs, it was possible to demonstrate their capacity to “signal” “benevolence”
and “integrity”, which in turn have a significant impact on purchase intentions. Unfamiliar e-retailers
may foster perceptions of “integrity” by utilizing text-blogs into their web sites, but they should avoid
embedding facial photos of shop representatives in the blog. If e-retailers want to make use of
“a corporate blog with facial photo”, it is recommended to combine it with the integration of a social
networking site such as Facebook in order to boost perceptions of “benevolence”.
Research limitations/implications – The simple integration of “social network applications” can
affect “initial trust beliefs” towards unfamiliar e-tailers and subsequent “purchase intentions”, but it
appears essential to utilize just the right cue combination in order to obtain the desired effect.
The effectiveness of integrating a social network application may vary according to the type and may
affect different trust beliefs (benevolence, integrity).
Originality/value – An important issue in e-commerce remains how trust is developed between
consumers and e-retailers. This paper investigates the use of different web communities and the
influence of their integration in the commercial web site on consumers’ initial trust beliefs in the online
environment. The findings will help business managers to understand how social media should be
used to lead to optimal results.
Keywords Electronic commerce, Consumer behaviour, Trust, Social media, Internet, Initial online trust,
Social networks, Corporate blog, B2C e-commerce
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
The internet is an inherently risky environment due to the absence of personal
contact, the impossibility of physical product evaluation, and the lack of solid Management Research Review
Vol. 35 No. 9, 2012
pp. 791-817
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
The authors would like to thank Kelly Dehaen, Master student at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel 2040-8269
who devoted her Master thesis to this subject, for her help in the data collection. DOI 10.1108/01409171211256569
MRR transaction protections. The absence of physical contact while shopping online makes
35,9 the issue of trust more imperative on the web than in the real world. As a result, the
majority of thriving e-retailers try to increase consumer trust by utilizing different
kinds of social media applications, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and corporate
blogs, which support two-way interactions between online shoppers, thus enhancing
the feeling of social presence (Karimov and Brengman, 2011). The effective use of social
792 media marketing tools to generate traffic and to boost sales volume has become the top
agenda for e-retailers (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Hence, many e-retailers seek new
ways in which they can make profitable use of social media marketing applications.
Nevertheless, several issues remain unexplored. Despite the fact that a large number
of e-retailers try to integrate social networking sites (SNSs) in their e-stores,
experiment-based studies investigating the effectiveness of social media cues in an
e-commerce setting remain limited. More and more e-retailers are involved in creating
corporate blogs in order to generate traffic and to ease consumers’ online shopping.
Dell Inc., for example, hires bloggers to create blogs on their web sites so that the online
company can address any issue raised by consumers (Spaulding, 2010). However,
studies investigating the effectiveness of such social network applications are in short
supply. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by studying online consumers’ affective and
cognitive responses with respect to online social media cues. Specifically, the integration
of web communities such as SNSs and corporate blogs into e-tail web sites is proposed to
influence cognitive and affective aspects of online trust towards unfamiliar e-commerce
vendors. Our findings demonstrate that, while the integration of such social network
applications can be effective in enhancing different aspects of initial online trust, their
use requires a gestalt approach in order to be effective.
This paper is structured as follows. First, we introduce the concept of initial
online trust, which is of primordial importance for unfamiliar e-retailers. Subsequently,
we provide a theoretical foundation, based on cue signaling theories, elucidating the
impact of the integration in the web site of social network applications on initial trust
formation and subsequent purchase intentions. This will lead us to our research model
and hypotheses. Next, we describe the research methodology and data collection
procedure. Consecutively, analyses and results are presented, followed by a discussion
and conclusions. Finally, we do acknowledge some limitations and provide some
suggestions for further research.

2. Initial online trust

Trust is important in an e-commerce context because it mitigates perceptions of
uncertainty, decreases perceived risk and positively affects purchase intentions
(Chang and Chen, 2008; Pavlou and Gefen, 2004; Pavlou and Fygenson, 2006). In an
e-commerce setting, certain cues such as company reputation information (Jin et al.,
2008) or an offline parent brand (Horppu et al., 2008) may help consumers to base their
trust in an online retailer. However, such information may not be available to consumers
when they deal with “unfamiliar” e-vendors. In this context, the concept of “initial trust”
becomes of paramount importance. It forms during the very first interaction with an
unfamiliar e-retailer, based on initial impressions of its web site characteristics (Wu et al.,
2010). In this paper we focus on initial trust and define it as “trust in an unfamiliar
trustee, a relationship in which the actors do not yet have credible, meaningful
information about, or affective bonds with, each other” (McKnight et al., 2002, p. 335).
Initial trust is composed of beliefs dealing with the “ability” (i.e. competence, expertness, B2C
and dynamism), “benevolence” (i.e. goodwill, responsiveness), and “integrity” e-commerce
(i.e. honesty, credibility, morality, reliability) of the unfamiliar trustee (Gefen and
Straub, 2004; McKnight et al., 1998). Underneath, we provide a more in-depth elucidation websites
of these trust dimensions.
According to the e-commerce trust literature, “ability” represents the competitive
power of the seller in a specific field. An online consumer’s perception of a firm’s “ability” 793
is based on two related beliefs regarding the e-retailer’s competence (expertise or skills)
to perform the intended behavior and its access to the necessary knowledge to perform
the behavior appropriately (Bhattacherjee, 2002). More specifically, “ability” is the
consumer’s belief about the competence, skills, and knowledge of the e-retailer to provide
good quality products and services (Gefen, 2002). The beliefs about the ability of an
online retailer may increase consumer’s intentions to purchase from the web site
(Gefen and Straub, 2004; Schlosser et al., 2006). Online retailers may “signal” their ability
to consumers by publishing metrics on their web sites such as number of customers,
items sold, and other transactional information (Bhattacherjee, 2002).
“Benevolence” denotes that the seller will not behave opportunistically and will treat
the buyer benevolently. It is defined as “the buyer’s belief that a seller has beneficial
motives, is genuinely concerned about the buyer’s interests, and will act in a goodwill
manner beyond short-term profit expectations” (Pavlou and Dimoka, 2006, p. 395). This
kind of belief is especially important for online shopping because in such interactions the
degree of consumer vulnerability is higher as it is possible that an online vendor may not
fulfill the expected side of the contract (Gefen, 2002; Schlosser et al., 2006). In order to
boost perceptions of benevolence, online retailers may use different features in their web
site such as online recommendation agents, seller-provided task-facilitating interactive
informational tools (i.e. filter systems and buying guides), or set strong privacy policies
to “signal” their benevolent intentions (Gupta et al., 2009; Lauer and Deng, 2007; Wang
and Benbasat, 2007).
“Integrity” implies that the seller will adhere to a set of rules of exchange and will
treat the buyer honestly during and after the exchange. It is defined as “the buyer’s
belief that a seller is competent and reliable and will fulfill the transaction’s contractual
requirements” (Pavlou and Dimoka, 2006, p. 395). The integrity belief involves honesty,
fairness, credibility, consistency, predictability, reliability, and dependability
(Bhattacherjee, 2002). The specific conditions of integrity are context-dependent and
many aspects of it, such as obeying to the rules and fulfilling promises are obviously
important in an e-commerce context (Gefen, 2002). Several scholars empirically confirm
that e-retailers may boost consumers’ integrity perceptions by providing strong
privacy policies, and online recommendation agents with tradeoff explanations on
their web sites (Lauer and Deng, 2007; Wang and Benbasat, 2007).
These three trust beliefs tap into both the “cognitive” and the “affective” dimensions
of trust (Bhattacherjee, 2002; Gefen, 2002). Several authors have designated “ability” and
“integrity” to “cognitive trust” and “benevolence” to “affective trust” (Dabholkar et al.,
2009; Komiak and Benbasat, 2006; McAllister, 1995; Pavlou and Dimoka, 2006).
“Cognitive” or “cognition-based trust” is defined as a consumer’s rational expectation
that an online vendor will have the necessary attributes to be relied upon (Komiak and
Benbasat, 2004). The concept of cognitive trust is derived from the theoretical
perspective to view trust as a trustor’s rational choice that is motivated by the conscious
MRR calculation of advantages (Komiak and Benbasat, 2006). “Cognition-based trust” evolves
35,9 from a pattern of careful rational thinking, while “affect-based trust” (also called
“emotional trust”) develops from one’s instincts, intuition, or feelings concerning
whether an individual, group or organization is trustworthy (Morrow et al., 2004). Thus,
“cognitive trust” reflects the customer’s confidence that an e-retailer is honest, accurate,
and dependable, and keeps promises, whereas “affective trust” is the conviction that
794 the e-retailer has genuine concern for the customer’s welfare, and is caring and
supportive (Dabholkar et al., 2009, p. 149).
The reason for this conceptualization of trust is that both cognitive processes and
affective influences may play a role in the formation of trust (Hui, 2011; Morrow et al.,
2004). Collectively, they provide the basis for trust-related decision making regarding a
vendor and many of the other trust dimensions proposed in the literature can be
reconciled within these two encompassing trust dimensions (Bhattacherjee, 2002;
Fuller et al., 2007). Although distinguishing between affective and cognitive trust is
often done in explaining the concept of trust, findings from neuroscience indicate that a
clear difference between them can hardly be maintained (Riegelsberger et al., 2005).
Thus, cognitive trust and affective trust can exist at the same time for the same
person(s) towards the same object (Corritore et al., 2003). In this paper, we consider
both cognitive and affective trust dimensions.

3. Theoretical background and research model

To investigate the impact of the integration of social network applications in a virtual store
on initial trust formation, we propose a model based on the stimulus-organism-response
(S-O-R) paradigm shown in Figure 1. The S-O-R paradigm suggests that certain
atmospheric elements of the web site (S) may influence an individual’s affective and
cognitive states (O) that mediate his/her approach (avoidance) responses (R) during online
shopping (Eroglu et al., 2001, 2003). In the context of online retailing, the stimulus (S) is
defined as “the total sum of all the cues that are visible and audible to the online shopper”
(Eroglu et al., 2001, p. 179).

3.1 Cue signaling theories

“Cue signaling theories” such as the “cue utilization theory” (Olson and Jacoby, 1972)
and the “cue consistency theory” (Maheswaran and Chaiken, 1991) may provide a
useful framework to understand how these web site atmospheric cues can be used

Stimulus Organism Response

Web Communities Trust Beliefs Approach/Avoidance

Social Network Site Cognitive trust

FACEBOOK Ability
Integrity Purchase intention
Corporate
BLOG Affective trust
Benevolence

Figure 1.
Research framework Covariate: Trust propensity
to stimulate consumers’ affective and cognitive trust perceptions towards unfamiliar B2C
vendors. Prior research has used these theories to examine the impact of extrinsic cues e-commerce
on consumers’ perceptions of product quality (Miyazaki et al., 2005), the trustworthiness
of web seals (Hu et al., 2010), and the effect of online social media cues on initial trust websites
(Aldiri et al., 2008). In this paper, we intend to investigate whether integrating social
media cues into the e-tail site may provide a signal regarding the trustworthiness of an
online vendor, which, in turn, may affect consumers’ purchase intentions. Therefore, we 795
use these theories as a foundation to develop our hypotheses.
The “cue utilization theory” suggests that a product sends out a series of intrinsic and
extrinsic cues signaling its quality to consumers (Olson and Jacoby, 1972). “Intrinsic
cues” are product-related attributes, such as ingredients, that cannot be manipulated
without also altering the physical properties of the product. Conversely, “extrinsic cues”
are product-related attributes which are not part of the physical product, such as price,
brand name, and packaging (Richardson et al., 1994). On the internet, the absence of
physical proximity prevents consumers to check the intrinsic attributes of products with
their senses. As a result, they rely more on extrinsic cues to assess the trustworthiness of
the online vendor (Hu et al., 2010). These extrinsic cues may encompass brand image,
customer reviews, third party endorsements, embedded social presence, and so on
(Karimov et al., 2011). In our study, the presence of web communities will serve as
extrinsic cues signaling the trustworthiness of an online vendor. We will have a closer
look at the “diagnosticity” (i.e. the capacity to signal e-vendor trustworthiness) of two
different kinds of social network applications.
The “cue consistency theory” proposes furthermore that multiple sources of
information that corroborate one another are more useful than if they offer incongruent
messages (Maheswaran and Chaiken, 1991). That is, extrinsic cues are significantly
more predictive of quality when they are consistent as opposed to when they present
inconsistent information (Miyazaki et al., 2005). An online vendor can utilize multiple
web site atmospheric cues such as colors, graphics, layout, navigation aids, animation,
music and sounds, entertainment, pictures, and site awards to increase the hedonic or
experiential value of shopping, to provide information about its quality, and to influence
online shoppers’ responses (Eroglu et al., 2003). In our study, we apply the “cue
consistency theory” to provide some insight into how multiple social media cues work
together in generating consumers’ online initial trust.

3.2 Signaling and building trustworthiness

Trust is typically “built” gradually through ongoing social interactions (Luhmann,
1979). The lack of social contact with store employees is still one of the main factors
holding back consumers to purchase online (Lowry et al., 2010). However, this does not
mean that social presence cannot be achieved in online interactions. In a web interface,
social interactions go beyond normal relationships in which a medium facilitates a
sense of understanding, connection, involvement, and interaction among participants
in stimulating online shoppers’ internal affective and cognitive states (Kumar and
Benbasat, 2002). Transmitting a sense of social presence by either direct or indirect
personal, sociable, and sensitive human contact via the web interface can trigger
consumers’ trust beliefs which in turn positively influence their purchase intentions
(Gefen and Straub, 2003; Gefen and Straub, 2004).
MRR The e-commerce literature suggests that higher levels of social presence can be
35,9 achieved by embedding social cues such as human images (Cyr et al., 2009), video
streams (Aljukhadar et al., 2010), avatars (Qiu and Benbasat, 2009), and text-to-speech
voice technologies (Qiu and Benbasat, 2005) into the e-tail interface “signaling” the
trustworthiness of an online vendor. Many e-retailers are involved in integrating social
media applications that support synchronous and asynchronous communication such as
796 blogging, podcasting, and instant messaging into their e-tail interfaces (Badawy, 2009).
These kinds of new media tools enable individuals to have interpersonal interactions with
each other as an online alternative to “face-to-face” social interactions (Papacharissi, 2009).
Consequently, the perception of a high degree of social presence during the virtual
interaction contributes to the formation of trust (Gefen and Straub, 2004).

3.3 Trust propensity

Of course there are many factors affecting consumers’ trust. One of the important
factors that particularly have a significant influence in forming new relationships is a
person’s general tendency to trust or distrust others. This tendency is referred to as
trust propensity (also called trust disposition). Trust propensity is a psychological trait
that is formed from early childhood and develops throughout the life period depending
on an individual’s socio-cultural background, developmental experiences, and his or
her personality traits (Mayer et al., 1995). Trust propensity is defined as “the extent to
which a person displays a tendency to be willing to depend on others across a broad
spectrum of situations and persons” (McKnight et al., 2002, p. 339). Internet retailers
cannot influence an individual’s trust propensity by applying specific trust building
strategies (Corritore et al., 2003; Leimeister et al., 2005). In an e-commerce setting, the
findings regarding the effect of trust propensity on online trust are contradictory.
While some studies confirm the positive influence of trust propensity on consumers’
initial trust in a web retailer (Chen and Barnes, 2007), others find that it is not an
important predictor of online trust (Lowry et al., 2008). Since trust propensity has been
argued to be an antecedent of trust in new relationships (Gefen and Straub, 2004), we
feel trust propensity needs to be included in an empirical model at least as a control
variable. Therefore, we include trust propensity as a covariate and expect that it
generates a direct effect on consumers’ trust beliefs regarding an unfamiliar e-retailer.

3.4 The mediating role of the online vendor’s perceived trustworthiness

Prior e-commerce researchers have found that both cognitive and affective appraisals of
the web environment have a strong influence on consumers’ purchase decisions
(Dabholkar et al., 2009; Lee and Kozar, 2009). The commitment-trust theory of relationship
marketing suggests that trust is a key mediating variable between its determining factors
and behavioral outcomes (Morgan and Hunt, 1994). Increased trust leads to a favorable
attitude towards online shopping as well as positively affects consumers’ purchase
intentions (Lim et al., 2006; Pavlou and Fygenson, 2006). Past research suggests that
online trust beliefs are important mediators between web site atmospheric cues and
consumers’ purchase intentions (Benedicktus et al., 2010; Schlosser et al., 2006).

4. Research objectives and hypotheses

The objective of this study is to investigate whether the mere integration of web
communities, such as an SNS and/or a corporate blog in the e-tail interface can
affect consumers’ initial trust towards an unfamiliar e-vendor and subsequent purchase B2C
intentions. As new and unknown e-retailers will have a hard time conveying their e-commerce
trustworthiness to potential online shoppers, we wonder whether integrating social
network applications in their web sites can “signal” their trustworthiness during a first websites
interaction with the web site. While building trust in a relationship obviously takes time,
conveying “initial trust” during a first encounter is of paramount importance for less
familiar e-retailers. In this study we make the distinction between SNSs and corporate 797
blogs as we believe that these two social network applications may influence consumers’
initial trust differently, because user generated reviews on SNSs can be perceived as
more objective as compared to corporate blog posts and may thus provide a more
“diagnostic” (or stronger) signal of trustworthiness. Moreover, we are interested to see
whether the use of multiple social media cues interact with each other in engendering
perceptions of trustworthiness. In the following sections the social network applications
focused upon in this study are defined and our hypotheses concerning their effects on
initial online trust and subsequent purchase intentions are generated.

4.1 Social network applications

A “SNS” is defined as a:
[. . .] web-based service that allows individuals (1) to construct a public or semi-public profile
within a bounded system (2) to compile a list of other users with whom they share a
connection, and (3) to view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others
within the system (Boyd and Ellison, 2008, p. 211).
Diverse types of online social networks exist. These online networks can be used for
versatile reasons such as information sharing, video sharing, photo sharing, chatting,
tagging, dating, gaming, and blogging (Hoadley et al., 2010). The best examples of
popular SNSs are Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube that allow user content
creation, such as personal profiles, interests and contact information, photos, videos,
and other messages posted by friends (Rosen et al., 2011). People participate in virtual
social networks because of their personal, social and hedonic benefits (Lievens and
Mahr, 2010). Maintaining existing relationships, keeping in touch with people, learning
friends’ updates, showing personal information, finding people with similar interests,
finding dates, and meeting new people are rated as the most useful features of SNSs
(Hoadley et al., 2010).
A “blog” is another popular type of social networking application that can come in a
multitude of different variations. A “blog” can be defined as a virtual community
where an organization or an individual publishes and manages content in an
interactive format to attain its goals (Lee et al., 2006). The blogosphere may contain
text-based blog entries and profiles, pictures and multimedia resources (Li and Chen,
2009). Visitors use such virtual communities to maintain and expand their network of
relationships, and to satisfy their needs for personal fulfillment, social exchange, and
entertainment (Lievens and Mahr, 2010). Nowadays, about one third of top online
retailers attempt to address these needs by maintaining “corporate blogs” in order to
communicate with their customers and to provide support to ease their shopping
decisions (Karimov and Brengman, 2011). Dell Inc., for example, has been successful in
shifting part of its product support to online communities by creating support blogs to
answer questions and solve issues (Spaulding, 2010).
MRR 4.2 Signaling trustworthiness by integrating social network applications
35,9 Since it is impossible to examine the intrinsic attributes of products in a
virtual environment, online consumers may seek unbiased supportive information in
purchasing more technically complicated or less familiar (niche) products. In this
respect, online product reviews have become a major information source for consumers
regarding product quality (Hu et al., 2008). SNSs, for example, promote the vision of a
798 human-centric web, where the network of people and their interests are the primary
source of information (Pallis et al., 2011). Information shared within SNSs is likely to
have a high credibility, since it is expected to lack a commercial nature. These kinds of
seemingly unbiased opinions or recommendations, shared between online shoppers,
can ease their shopping decisions. Guo et al. (2011) investigated Taobao, a Chinese
consumer marketplace, which is the world’s largest e-commerce web site. Their findings
demonstrate that communication between buyers is a fundamental driver of purchasing
activity from the commercial site. Hsiao et al. (2010) also empirically confirm that social
network related factors such as the expertise of a recommender in the social network
may increase consumer trust in an e-retailer.
The blog platform also facilitates a very high level of interpersonal interaction
that allows users to express their opinions, to make friends, and to exchange information
(Schau and Gilly, 2003). It enables users to share feelings, emotions, experiences, and place
trust in others by creating mutual bonds within their social circles (Nambisan and Baron,
2007). Although communication takes place in virtual worlds by chance, due to similarity
in emotions and experiences in life, users feel harmony in terms of opinions and actions,
which strengthens communication and creates positive perceptions of experiential value,
which in turn positively impact their perceptions and attitudes (Keng and Ting, 2009).
Since blogs provide the possibility of interaction with others by adding reflections
and comments, the integration of blogs into an e-commerce interface can be considered as
an effective mechanism that fosters a high level of social presence in the virtual world.
In the virtue of this discussion, we can conclude that the presence of social
network applications in a web interface may allow users to experience others as being
psychologically present in the virtual environment. Hence, according to the “cue utilization
theory”, we can presume that integrating social cues that promote social presence in an
e-commerce interface may enhance consumers’ initial online trust. Specifically, we propose
that the integration of web communities such as SNSs and corporate blogs into the e-tail
interface can provide a “signal” regarding the trustworthiness of unfamiliar e-commerce
vendors. Based on the “cue consistency theory”, we also presume that integrating multiple
extrinsic social cues, such as “an SNS” along with “a corporate blog”, will have a cumulative
effect on consumer’s initial trust beliefs. Thus, we put forward the following hypotheses:
H1. The integration of an SNS in an e-commerce interface will increase consumer’s
initial trust beliefs (a. ability; b. benevolence; c. integrity) towards an
unfamiliar e-retailer.
H2. The integration of a corporate blog in an e-commerce interface will increase
consumer’s initial trust beliefs (a. ability; b. benevolence; c. integrity) towards
an unfamiliar e-retailer.
H3. The integration of an SNS along with a corporate blog will have a cumulative
effect on consumer’s initial trust beliefs (a. ability; b. benevolence; c. integrity)
towards an unfamiliar e-retailer.
 H4. Trust beliefs (a. ability; b. benevolence; c. integrity) mediate the relationship B2C
between social media applications and consumers’ purchase intentions from e-commerce
an unfamiliar e-tail web site.
websites
5. Methodology
5.1 Experimental design
An experiment-based online survey was conducted to validate the proposed research
799
model and to test our hypotheses concerning the impact of web communities on
consumers’ initial trust beliefs (i.e. ability, benevolence, and integrity), and their
subsequent purchase intentions. For the experimental treatments we set up a 2 £ 3
between-subjects full-factorial design, manipulating for:
.
inclusion or exclusion of a “SNS” (i.e. Facebook); and
.
inclusion or exclusion of “a corporate blog” (“text blog, photo and text blog, or no
blog”).

For the experiment we used a “fictitious”, and thus by definition “unfamiliar”, web site
for a gift gadgets selling company called WebGiftDirect, in order to avoid any potential
bias from previous branding or web-experiences. We outsourced the web site design to a
professional web-designer in order to create a real functioning e-commerce web site with
a professional “look and feel” to simulate a real online shopping experience. Hence, we
have developed six different versions of the web site. One version of the web site did not
have any web community application and the participants who viewed this version are
referred to as the control group. The other five versions served as treatment conditions
and all contained different levels of the above mentioned “web community” applications
displayed prominently on the web sites. To simulate the presence of “an SNS”, we
included “a Facebook Like Box” in the web site which was linked to our experimental
web site’s Facebook page. To incorporate “a corporate blog” we have created several
blogs on behalf of a company representative.

5.2 Data collection and subjects

What the data collection is concerned, we have sent e-mail invitations to approximately
16,000 students from different universities and graduate schools in Belgium, through
the use of different internal fora, which allow reaching students of different faculties
and years as well as by means of Facebook contacts. Using students as the subject pool
for this internet study was deemed appropriate as they have advanced computer skills,
have more internet experience, are heavy internet users, are particularly active in SNSs,
and have more positive attitudes towards online shopping than most other population
segments (Seock and Bailey, 2008; Sorce et al., 2005; Grabner-Kräuter and Kaluscha,
2003). This resulted in 306 completed records; of which 80 incomplete cases had to be
eliminated because a large proportion of the questions remained unanswered, leaving
a final dataset of 226 usable records. 50 percent of our respondents belonged to the
age group 15-21 and 50 percent were older. The majority of our respondents were
female (67.3 percent). The demographical distribution of our final sample is provided in
Table I. We performed Pearson x 2 tests which confirmed an equal distribution of
respondents over the experimental conditions what age, gender and educational level
is concerned.
 35,9

800
MRR

Table I.
Sample demographics
Six sites Facebook Corporate blog
Total x2 No Facebook Facebook x2 No blog Text blog Photo blog x2
n (%) (Sig.) n (%) n (%) (Sig.) n (%) n (%) n (%) (Sig.)

Age
15-21 113 (50.0) 4.335 60 (51.3) 53 (48.6) 0.159 31 (42.5) 38 (50.0) 44 (57.1) 3.229
22 þ 113 (50.0) (0.502) 57 (48.7) 56 (51.4) (0.790) 42 (57.5) 38 (50.0) 33 (42.9) (0.199)
Gender
Male 74 (32.7) 7.677 39 (33.3) 35 (32.1) 0.038 30 (41.1) 23 (30.3) 21 (27.3) 3.571
Female 152 (67.3) (0.175) 78 (66.7) 74 (67.9) (0.888) 43 (58.9) 53 (69.7) 56 (72.7) (0.168)
Education
, High school 60 (26.5) 31 (26.5) 29 (26.6) 15 (20.5) 27 (35.5) 18 (23.4)
Undergraduate 92 (40.7) 7.719 52 (44.4) 40 (36.7) 1.837 34 (46.6) 26 (34.2) 32 (41.6) 5.278
Graduate . 74 (32.7) (0.656) 34 (29.1) 40 (36.7) (0.399) 24 (32.9) 23 (30.3) 27 (35.1) (0.260)
Total 226 (100) 117 (51.8) 109 (48.2) 73 (32.3) 76 (33.6) 77 (34.1)
Notes: Pearson x 2: computed for 2 £ 2 tables; p-values are reported in parentheses
5.3 Task and procedure B2C
Subjects were given the task of purchasing a birthday gift for a friend e-commerce
(see “experimental task”). There are two reasons for choosing to sell gift gadgets in
our experimental web sites. First, while gift gadgets are socially and emotionally websites
loaded products, the monetary risk involved in such products is rather low. Second,
using different unbranded gadgets ensured to avoid any possible brand related
confounding effects. The purpose of using unbranded products was to eliminate the 801
effect of brand equity on initial trust formation (Lowry et al., 2008). Therefore, we
carefully selected different types of gift gadgets both relevant for men and women and
ensured the products shown on the web site did not possess any brand related
information.
The experiment was conducted entirely online and subjects could complete the study
from any computer with an internet connection, thus increasing the online shopping task
realism. The online questionnaire was created through the use of a free online service
“http://thesistools.com/”. The e-mail invitation contained a link to the survey and by
clicking on this link subjects were automatically randomly assigned to one of the six
versions of the survey. The shopping task was presented at the beginning of the
questionnaire. Subsequently, subjects had to click on a link to the designated web site,
which they had to browse first before continuing with the questionnaire. Subjects could
explore the designated version of WebGiftDirect.com for as long as they wanted,
imagining themselves in a buying situation in which they were interested in purchasing
a gift for a friend. After examining the web site contents, subjects could easily be
redirected to the survey by clicking on the link provided within the experimental sites.
Experimental task:
Welcome to WebGiftDirect! WebGiftDirect is a new online gift store, offering a wide range of
gifts. Please thoroughly explore the web site in order to become familiar with its contents and
choose the gift that you are most likely to buy for your best friend’s upcoming birthday party.
Imagine that you don’t have enough time to go to the offline-store and that WebGiftDirect is
the first site you visit online in order to choose an appropriate gift. After finishing shopping,
please click on the “Proceed to Survey” button to complete the questionnaire.

5.4 Measures
All measurement items pertained to seven-point Likert-type scales, and were adopted
from recent relevant literature, where they have repeatedly been shown to exhibit
strong content validity (Appendix Table AI). The questionnaire measured trust beliefs
“ability”, “benevolence”, and “integrity” by means of items taken from Schlosser et al.
(2006) (based on Gefen, 2002; McKnight et al., 2002). An exploratory factor analysis
was performed on these trust beliefs, revealing the three underlying dimensions:
ability, integrity, and benevolence (Table II).
The Cronbach’s alphas for each sub-construct were larger than the required 0.70 cut
off point: “ability beliefs” (four items; a ¼ 0.879), “benevolence beliefs” (five items;
a ¼ 0.880), “integrity beliefs” (five items; a ¼ 0.893), demonstrating their internal
validity (Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994). The derived factor scores were subsequently
used to perform further analyses. The items to measure “purchase intention”
(five items; a ¼ 0.950) were derived from Loiacono et al. (2007) and “trust propensity”
was measured by means of eight items (a ¼ 0.907), which have been adapted from
Aljukhadar et al. (2010) (based on McKnight et al., 2002). Minor wording changes
MRR
Rotated component matrixa
35,9 Component
Code Construct items 1 2 3

Integrity
TBI2 I do not doubt the honesty of WebGiftDirect 0.858 0.190 0.228
802 TBI5 I can count on WebGiftDirect to be sincere 0.797 0.267 0.256
TBI1 Promises made by WebGiftDirect are likely to be reliable 0.743 0.308 0.379
TBI4 I expect that the advice given by WebGiftDirect is their best 0.599 0.444 0.147
judgment
TBI3 I expect that WebGiftDirect will keep the promises they make 0.552 0.494 0.302
Benevolence
TBB2 I expect that WebGiftDirect has good intentions towards me 0.241 0.804 0.286
TBB4 I expect that WebGiftDirect puts customers’ interests before their 0.248 0.755 0.023
own
TBB1 I expect that WebGiftDirect is ready and willing to assist and 0.152 0.701 0.379
support me
TBB3 I expect that WebGiftDirect’s intentions are benevolent 0.488 0.652 0.313
TBB5 I expect that WebGiftDirect is well meaning 0.526 0.632 0.241
Ability
TBA2 I believe that WebGiftDirect understands the market they work in 0.212 0.126 0.860
TBA3 I believe that WebGiftDirect knows about gifts 0.183 0.233 0.821
TBA4 I believe that WebGiftDirect knows how to provide excellent service 0.240 0.389 0.711
TBA1 I believe that WebGiftDirect is competent 0.450 0.150 0.706
Cronbach’s alpha 0.893 0.880 0.879
Eigenvalue percentage of variance 25.589 24.417 22.683
Table II. Notes: aRotation converged in six iterations; “extraction method”: principal component analysis;
Factor analysis “rotation method”: varimax with Kaiser normalization

were made to the measurement instruments in order to adjust them to the online gift
shopping task. Since the targeted respondents were Dutch speaking Belgians, the
questionnaire was composed in Dutch. Scales have been (back) translated by a
multilingual professor who has a degree in Germanic languages.

5.5 Manipulation checks

For manipulation checks, we followed O’Keefe (2003) to determine
whether the participants were aware of the experimental manipulations in the
different conditions of the experiment. Four manipulation check items were included in
the questionnaire for this purpose (Appendix Table AI). For the SNS treatment
condition, almost all respondents recalled having seen a “Facebook Like Box”
(98.2 percent), but interestingly, 23.1 percent of the respondents in the non-treatment
condition also recalled having seen an SNS. For the “blogging” treatment conditions,
a majority of the respondents recalled having seen a “blog” (80.4 percent), but also
8.2 percent of the respondents in the non-treatment condition recalled having seen a
“blog”. It is possible that some of the respondents did not actually make a distinction
between both kinds of social networking applications. Still, whether or not respondents
did make this distinction or whether they paid actual attention to the social networking
applications is not really an issue, as the signaling process we aim to examine may work
unconsciously (O’Keefe, 2003).
6. Analyses and results B2C
The data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) in e-commerce
order to identify to what extent the integration of “web communities” (i.e. an SNS and a
corporate blog) can impact consumers’ “initial trust” (i.e., ability, benevolence, and websites
integrity) towards an unfamiliar e-tail web site. First, we checked the data for
violations of statistical assumptions in order to be able to perform a MANCOVA
analysis. Box’s test assessing the assumption of equality of covariance matrices is 803
non-significant ( p . 0.05), hence, the covariance matrices are roughly equal and the
assumption of homogeneity is met. Levene’s statistics also indicate that for each of the
residuals, there are equal group variances, which lends support to the assumption of
equal covariance matrices across the different experimental groups.
Because consumers’ “trust propensity” appeared to have, as expected, a significant
positive impact on “trust beliefs”, it was included as a covariate in the analysis. But
first it was verified and confirmed that all the preconditions to do so were met. Also
the respondents’ “age” appeared to have a significant impact on “trust beliefs”, more
specifically what “ability” beliefs are concerned. Therefore, we also controlled for age
by including it as a covariate in the analysis. Table III displays the results of
the MANCOVA analysis.
Our multivariate test shows that no overall interaction effect can be revealed. While
there seems to be no significant main effect of the presence of the SNS “Facebook” on
overall “trust beliefs” (l ¼ 0.995, F (df ¼ 3) ¼ 0.346, p ¼ 0.792), according to Wilk’s
lambda, there does appear to be a significant main effect of the presence of a “corporate
blog” on overall “trust beliefs” (l ¼ 0.928, F(df ¼ 6) ¼ 2.728, p ¼ 0.013).
Since we are interested, however, in the effects of the social networking applications
on the individual trust beliefs, we will further discuss the results of the univariate
ANCOVA tests. Our results show that there are no main effects of the presence of an
“SNS” on any of the individual trust beliefs either, and thus H1 should be rejected
entirely. We do note however a significant interaction effect of the integration of an
“SNS” and a “corporate blog” what perceived “benevolence” is concerned
(F(df ¼ 2) ¼ 3.791, p ¼ 0.024) and will have a closer look at that later on. Regarding
the integration of a “blog” we cannot reveal any main effect on perceived “ability”, thus
we should reject H2a, but we do notice some significant main effects on perceived
“benevolence” (F(df ¼ 2) ¼ 4.690, p ¼ 0.010) and “integrity” (F(df ¼ 2) ¼ 3.721,
p ¼ 0.026), inclining us to accept H2b and H2c. However, it seems necessary to have
a closer look at our findings first, as shown in Figures 2 and 3.
Figure 2 clearly reveals that the integration of a “corporate blog” in an e-retailer web
site appears to enhance “integrity” beliefs only in case it involves a “text blog without
photo”. Integrating a blog with picture even seems to have a detrimental effect on
perceived integrity, but a post hoc Bonferroni test indicates that this difference is not
significant. In fact the only significant difference emerges when comparing the perceived
integrity evoked by both blog conditions (“perceived integrity” ¼ 0.222text only blog
versus 2 0.183text and photo blog, post hoc Bonferroni: p ¼ 0.024).
In Figure 3 we clearly notice the positive impact on perceived “benevolence” of the
presence of a blog, which appears to be most pronounced when a “photo and text” blog
is integrated in the web site. Pairwise comparisons prove this latter effect to be highly
significant (“perceived benevolence” ¼ 0.263text and photo blog versus 2 0.201no blog,
post hoc Bonferroni: p ¼ 0.010).
 35,9

beliefs
804
MRR

Table III.
The effect of integrating
web communities on trust
Independent variables
Covariates Main effects Interaction effect
Trust propensity Age Blog SNS Blog £ SNS
Dependent variables Sig. Sig. No blog Text blog Photo blog Sig. No Yes Sig. Sig.

Ability (0.025) (0.001) 0.072 2 0.042 20.029 (0.743) 0.016 20.014 (0.819) (0.973)
Benevolence (0.002) (0.167) 20.201 2 0.078 0.263 (0.010) 20.030 0.019 (0.700) (0.024)
Integrity (0.000) (0.654) 20.048 0.222 20.183 (0.026) 0.055 20.060 (0.351) (0.569)
Wilk’s lambda (0.000) (0.003) (0.013) (0.792) (0.170)
Notes: Sample (n ¼ 226); MANCOVA: 2 £ 3 between-subjects full-factorial design; p-values are reported in parentheses
 0.30000
B2C
e-commerce
websites
0.20000
Estimated Marginal Means

0.10000
805

0.00000

–0.10000

–0.20000 Figure 2.
The main effect of the
presence of a corporate
No Blog Blog (text only) Blog (with photo)
blog on “integrity” beliefs
CORPORATE BLOG

0.30000

0.20000
Estimated Marginal Means

0.10000

0.00000

–0.10000

–0.20000

Figure 3.
–0.30000 The main effect of the
presence of a corporate
No Blog Blog (text only) Blog (with photo)) blog on “benevolence”
beliefs
CORPORATE BLOG

Still, a closer look at Figure 4 sheds some more light on the significant interaction of both
social network applications on “benevolence” beliefs (F(df ¼ 2) ¼ 3.791, p ¼ 0.024). The
positive effect of the integration of a “photo and text blog” only seems true in case an
“SNS” is also integrated in the web site. In that case “benevolence” perceptions even
reach 0.533SNSþ photo blog, which is quite high when compared to the control condition
without any social network application (20.092). When no SNS is present we cannot
MRR 0.60000 SNS
35,9 No SNS
Yes SNS

0.40000

806
Estimated Marginal Means

0.20000

0.00000

–0.20000

Figure 4. –0.40000
Interaction effect of SNS
and corporate blog on No Blog Blog (text only) Blog (with photo))
“benevolence” beliefs
CORPORATE BLOG

reveal any impact of the integration of a blog whatsoever. On the other hand, integrating
an SNS only seems to increase “benevolence” beliefs when a blog is also present
incorporating a picture of a sales representative. This provides some partial support for
H3b, regarding the combined effect of social network applications in signaling
“trustworthiness” what “benevolence” is concerned. No such support could be revealed
for H3a or H3c, concerning “ability” and “integrity” beliefs.
Finally, we investigated the mediating role of “initial trust beliefs” evoked by
integrating social networking applications (i.e. SNS and blog) on shoppers’ “purchase
intentions” (H4). Following the guidelines offered by Zhao et al. (2010) and Hayes and
Preacher (2011) we conducted a bootstrapping analysis (with 5,000 bootstrapping
samples and a 95 percent confidence level) to test the mediation effects and to reveal
the indirect as well as the direct effects of integrating social networking applications on
shopping intentions. We enter the different initial trust beliefs “ability”, “benevolence”,
and “integrity” as possible mediators into the model (using Hayes and Preacher’s
MEDIATE syntax for SPSS), while examining the main individual effects, as well as
the combined effect of the social media applications of interest in this study
(i.e. Facebook and a corporate blog). In order to control for any confounding effects
of age and trust propensity, these variables were again added to the analysis as
covariates. A comprehensive overview of our findings is displayed in Table IV.
According to our mediation analysis we can discern some direct effects (path: c0 )
of integrating social network applications on “purchase intentions” (R2adj ¼ 0.096;
F(df ¼ 7, 218) ¼ 4.42, p ¼ 0.0001: we identify a significant positive effect of integrating
 Path: c 0 Path: a Path: c
Trust beliefs (M)
Purchase intention (Y) Ability Benevolence Integrity Purchase intention (Y)
R2adj ¼ 0.096 R2adj ¼ 0.041 R2adj ¼ 0.089 R2adj ¼ 0.147 R2adj ¼ 0.391
Coeff. Sig. Coeff. Sig. Coeff. Sig. Coeff. Sig. Coeff. Sig.
Independent variables (X)
SNS 2 0.0371 n.s. 2 0.0632 n.s. 20.2196 n.s. 20.2267 n.s. 0.1169 n.s.
Any blog 0.0922 n.s. 2 0.1506 n.s. 0.1004 n.s. 0.2506 n.s. 0.0581 n.s.
Photo blog 2 0.4047 (0.061) 2 0.0366 n.s. 20.0165 n.s. 20.5322 (0.012) 20.2514 n.s.
Any blog £ SNS 2 0.1868 n.s. 0.0737 n.s. 0.0454 n.s. 0.0402 n.s. 20.2443 n.s.
Photo blog £ SNS 0.6124 (0.048) 2 0.0477 n.s. 0.7153 (0.022) 0.2542 n.s. 0.3775 n.s.
Covariates
Trust propensity 0.3174 (0.000) 0.1500 (0.025) 0.1998 (0.002) 0.3507 (0.000) 0.0897 n.s.
Age 2 0.0064 n.s. 2 0.0406 (0.001) 20.1671 n.s. 20.0051 n.s. 0.0179 n.s.
Path: b Ability 0.4577 (0.000)
Benevolence 0.2480 (0.000)
Integrity 0.3120 (0.000)
Indirect effects through
Trust beliefs (M) on purchase intention (Y)
Path: a £ b
Ability Benevolence Integrity
Effect CIlow CIup Effect CIlow CIup Effect CIlow CIup Type of mediation
Independent variables (X)
SNS 2 0.0289 2 0.2624 0.1989 20.0545 20.1678 0.0539 20.0707 2 0.2148 0.0539 Non mediation
Any blog 2 0.0689 2 0.2654 0.1338 0.0249 20.0940 0.1614 0.0782 2 0.0505 0.2390 Non mediation
Photo blog 0.0168 2 0.1776 0.2094 20.0041 20.1189 0.0898 20.1660 2 0.3314 2 0.0287 Indirect-only
Any blog £ SNS 0.0337 2 0.2924 0.3307 0.0113 20.1543 0.1675 0.0125 2 0.1731 0.2002 Non mediation
Photo blog £ SNS 2 0.0218 2 0.2691 0.2439 0.1774 0.0242 0.3828 0.0793 2 0.1116 0.2988 Indirect-only
Notes: Number of samples used for indirect effect confidence intervals: 5,000; bootstrap level of confidence for confidence intervals: 95 percent; p-values
are reported in parentheses
e-commerce

on purchase intention
Direct and indirect effects
websites
B2C

807

Table IV.
MRR the combination: “photo blog £ SNS” (b ¼ 0.6124, p ¼ 0.048), but also a marginally
35,9 significant negative effect of integrating a “photo blog only” (b ¼ 2 0.4047, p ¼ 0.061)
Subsequently, we verified whether any effects of social network applications are
mediated by “initial trust beliefs”. When including the trust beliefs “ability”,
“benevolence”, and “integrity” into the equation, we cannot discern any direct main
effects of the presence of social network applications (path: c) anymore. We do, however,
808 demonstrate strong effects of “initial trust beliefs” on “purchase intentions” (path: b) –
(R2adj ¼ 0.391; F(df ¼ 10, 215) ¼ 15.44, p , 0.001):, i.e. “ability” (b ¼ 0.458, p , 0.001),
“benevolence” (b ¼ 0.248, p , 0.001), and “integrity” (b ¼ 0.312, p , 0.001).
While we cannot reveal any indirect effects through “ability” beliefs (path: a £ b),
we do notice some indirect effects through “benevolence” and “integrity” beliefs. The
bootstrap mediation test clearly makes the case (at a ¼ 0.05) that the trust belief
“benevolence” mediates the combined effect of “photo blog £ SNS” on “purchase
intentions” (path: a £ b: indirect effect ¼ 0.1774; CIlow ¼ 0.024 and CIup ¼ 0.383). Since
the direct combined effect of “photo blog £ SNS” (path: c) becomes not statistically
significant anymore, this infers a clear “indirect-only” mediation effect (Zhao et al.,
2010), also referred to by Baron and Kenny (1986) as “full mediation” effect. Similarly,
we find that the trust belief “integrity” mediates the effect of the integration of a “photo
blog” on “purchase intentions” (path: a £ b: indirect effect ¼ 2 0.1660; CIlow ¼ 2 0.331
and CIup ¼ 2 0.029). Since the direct effect of the “photo blog” (path: c) also becomes
not statistically significant anymore, this point to another clear “indirect-only” or “full”
mediation effect. Therefore, the mediation hypothesis (H4) can be supported what
“benevolence” (H4b) and “integrity” (H4c) are concerned, but should be rejected what
“ability” (H4a) is concerned.

7. Discussion
In this study we tested the effectiveness of the mere integration of social network
applications to provide a signal concerning the “trustworthiness” of an unfamiliar
e-vendor in order to enhance subsequent purchase intentions. While the simple integration
of Facebook could not enhance the perceived “ability”, “benevolence” or “integrity” of the
online merchant, the combination of Facebook with a corporate blog featuring the picture
of a sales representative did appear to have a positive effect on “benevolence” beliefs,
which were in turn proven to play an important mediating role explaining the indirect
impact of such a combination of social network applications on ultimate purchase
intentions. On the other hand, an unfamiliar e-commerce web site featuring only a
corporate blog with picture, not combined with an SNS, appeared to have a negative
impact on “integrity” beliefs, which in turn negatively affect “purchase intentions”. Thus,
the simple integration of “social network applications” can affect “initial trust beliefs”
towards unfamiliar e-tailers and subsequent “purchase intentions”, but it appears
essential to utilize just the right cue combination in order to obtain the desired effect.
While the MANCOVA analysis demonstrated that integrating a “text blog” in the
commercial web site could enhance perceived “integrity”, adding “a facial photo of a
shop representative” in the blog significantly decreased perceived “integrity”.
To understand this, one should keep in mind that perceived “integrity” refers to
perceived “honesty, fairness, credibility, and reliability” and involves “cognition-based
trust” that evolves from a pattern of careful rational thinking, which is motivated by a
conscious calculation of advantages (Komiak and Benbasat, 2006; Mayer et al., 1995).
Thus, online shoppers need unbiased and objective product information to make their B2C
rational judgments and product choices (Wang and Benbasat, 2007). The presence of a e-commerce
facial photo of a shop representative in the corporate blog might be elevating
consumers’ negative perceptions about the “objectivity” of the blog post, because shop websites
assistants are usually perceived as a source of biased suggestions and guidance
because they are as a rule under the pressure to achieve their sales quota. While the
majority of the respondents (90.9 percent), who remembered having seen the “facial 809
photo” in the blog, evaluated this image as trustworthy, the information presented in
the blog was judged less trustworthy when it featured a “facial photo” of the shop
representative next to it. In fact, 44.8 percent of the respondents within the “text
blogging” condition who actually paid attention to the blog, reported to find its
information content trustworthy, as compared to only 33.3 percent of the respondents
within the “photo blogging” condition. Prior research also found that online
shoppers seem more likely to trust cartoon-like characters than human-like characters
during online transactions, because human-like characters can even be seen as
“surveillance” representing a threat to privacy (Luo et al., 2006). Objectivity is among
the main concerns that consumers have when using online informative guidance
(Komiak et al., 2005). Hence, the higher level of social presence evoked by embedding a
facial photo of a shop representative may raise suspicions, causing a detrimental
effect on perceived “integrity” and subsequent “purchase intentions”. Therefore, when
utilizing “a corporate blog” to enhance “purchase intentions”, it is vital to convey a
strong sense of justice, honesty, and objectivity to the web community.
Our next interesting finding involves the combined effect of integrating an “SNS”
and a “blog” in fostering consumers’ “benevolence” perceptions towards unfamiliar
e-retailers and subsequent “purchase intentions”. Although we did not find any direct
effect of integrating “Facebook” on trust beliefs, combining “a blog with photo” with
the SNS “Facebook” did significantly strengthen the effects of both social media
applications in enhancing consumers’ benevolence beliefs. Since perceptions of
“benevolence” are based on immediate affective reactions to attractiveness, the human
images manipulated in the web interface could have inspired emotional responses,
which may have resulted in favorable attitudes towards the web site (Cyr et al., 2009).

8. Conclusions, limitations and suggestions for further research

Although we could not reveal any effects of the integration of social network applications
on “ability” beliefs, we were able to demonstrate their capacity to “signal” “benevolence”
and “integrity”. Moreover, all trust beliefs were shown to have a significant positive
impact on consumers’ purchase intentions, once again confirming the vital importance
of trust in e-commerce success. More specifically, e-retailers may foster perceptions of
“integrity” by integrating “text blogs” into their web sites. However, they need to avoid
embedding facial photos of shop representatives in such blogs. Our findings show that
incorporating a facial photo of a shop representative in a “corporate blog” may actually
diminish the trustworthiness of the blog. We argue that this could be due to a decrease in
perceived “objectivity” of the information provided in the blog. Moreover, this study
demonstrates that such doubts regarding the “integrity” of the e-vendor can negatively
affect purchase intentions. On the other hand, the combination of a “photo blog” with
“Facebook” in the web site can enhance “benevolence” beliefs towards an unfamiliar
e-retailer, which in turn positively affects purchase intentions.
MRR There are a few limitations to this study that should be addressed in future research.
35,9 One important limitation to this study concerns the “external validity” of the findings.
Unfortunately, as a direct consequence of the main concern for internal validity,
experiments are generally rather weak in generalizability. Therefore, extensions of this
study to other e-commerce contexts and integrating other (combinations of) social
network applications are called for to determine the generalizability of our findings.
810 Moreover, this was a controlled study. Subjects were given a fictitious task and were
asked to browse a fictitious web site that strictly manipulated design features in order to
control for potential biases from extraneous factors such as company or product brand
information. Future research could enhance the realism of the task by integrating a real
financial risk, for example, by offering the chance to win the selected products or by
offering real money to spend in the fictitious e-store. The study could even be extended to
an actual real world field experiment, where different versions of an actual e-store exist.
Regarding the social network applications, we investigated the impact of their mere
presence and did not allow for actual interaction on the social network, which
presumably would evoke an even stronger effect on trust and remains to be investigated.
Also we exclusively provided positive content, instead of positive versus negative user
comments. It would be interesting to see how reinforcing or contradictory information is
assimilated applying the cue consistency theory as a theoretical framework. Our study
focused on students, more particular on Dutch speaking Belgian students. It still needs
to be determined whether the obtained results hold in other populations (i.e. other age
groups, other cultures, etc.). Another area for future research may be to determine the
extent to which the findings presented in this paper can be expanded to other
e-commerce settings (c2c, b2b or m-commerce). As our results provide strong support for
the significant positive impact of “trust propensity” on trust beliefs, it is recommended to
measure and control for this personal characteristic when investigating (other) web site
related trust determinants.

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About the authors 815

Malaika Brengman (PhD in Applied Economics, University of Ghent) (UG), is Associate
Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), where she teaches Marketing, Strategic
Marketing Management, Consumer Behaviour and Market Research. She started her academic
career as Assistant Professor at Hasselt University, where she has also been lecturing in
Marketing Communications, e-Business, Services Management and Customer Relationship
Management. She has also been guest lecturing at other academic institutions such as
Solvay Business School at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the International School of
Management at the Leti-Lovanian University in St Petersburg, Russia. Guided by her strong
interests in retailing, marketing communications and consumer behaviour, her scientific research
generally focuses on the impact of store atmospherics and consumers’ shopping motivations and
behaviour, specifically also with regard to alternative distribution channels such as e-commerce
and shopping in virtual worlds. She also studies marketing communications’ effectiveness,
especially with regard to new media. She has published her work in well-established journals,
such as the Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, the Journal of Business Research, the
Journal of Marketing Communications, the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, the
Journal of Brand Management, the Journal of Product & Brand Management, and Advances in
Consumer Research. She has presented her findings at numerous international conferences.
Farhod P. Karimov (PhD in Applied Economics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel) is a subject area
leader for marketing at Westminster International University in Tashkent (WIUT), where he also
teaches Marketing, Strategic Marketing Management, Consumer Behaviour, Market Research
and Creating and Delivering Customer Value. As a guest lecturer he has also been teaching
Principles of Marketing, Consumer Behavior, and Pricing Strategies in Marketing for a couple of
years at the International Business School in Tashkent. His current scientific research is focused
on understanding the impacts of website atmospherics on online consumers’ shopping
behaviour, effectiveness of social media applications, security issues in e-commerce and online
payment systems. The aim of the research is to capture the lessons of successful models for
e-businesses serving promising online segment. He is actively involved in studying the role of
social media in e-commerce and specifically how it influences the acceptance of online shopping.
In addition to his interest in internet marketing, he also studies entrepreneurial marketing,
neuromarketing and ICT research in transition economies. Farhod P. Karimov is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: Farhod.Karimov@gmail.com

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816
MRR

Table AI.
Survey items and sources
Code Cronbach’s alpha
Appendix

a
Trust belief items
Ability 0.879
TBA1 I believe that WebGiftDirect is competent
TBA2 I believe that WebGiftDirect understands the market they work in
TBA3 I believe that WebGiftDirect knows about gifts
TBA4 I believe that WebGiftDirect knows how to provide excellent service
Benevolence 0.880
TBB1 I expect that WebGiftDirect is ready and willing to assist and support me
TBB2 I expect that WebGiftDirect has good intentions towards me
TBB3 I expect that WebGiftDirect’s intentions are benevolent
TBB4 I expect that WebGiftDirect puts customers’ interests before their own
TBB5 I expect that WebGiftDirect is well meaning
Integrity 0.893
TBI1 Promises made by WebGiftDirect are likely to be reliable
TBI2 I do not doubt the honesty of WebGiftDirect
TBI3 I expect that WebGiftDirect will keep the promises they make
TBI4 I expect that the advice given by WebGiftDirect is their best judgment
TBI5 I can count on WebGiftDirect to be sincere
Purchase intentionsb 0.950
PI1 If I needed gifts in the future, I would be likely to buy them from the WebGiftDirect store
PI2 If I needed gifts in the future, I would probably revisit this web site
PI3 If I needed gifts in the future, I would probably try this web site
PI4 If I needed gifts in the future, I would probably end up making a purchase from this web site
PI5 I would recommend the WebGiftDirect store to a friend interested in buying gifts
Trust propensityc 0.907
TP1 In general, most online retailers keep their promises
TP2 I think online retailers generally try to back up their words with their actions
TP3 Most online retailers are honest in their dealings with their customers
TP4 In general, online retailers really do care about the well-being of their customers
TP5 The typical online retailers are sincerely concerned about the problems of their customers
(continued)
Code Cronbach’s alpha

TP6 I generally give online retailers the benefit of the doubt when I first get to know them
TP7 Usually, I think that online retailers are trustworthy
TP8 My typical approach is to trust new online retailers until they prove I should not trust them
Manipulation check items
1. Did you notice a blog on the website? AYes ANo
2. Did you notice a Facebook Like Box frame on the website? AYes ANo
3. Did you find the person on the photo of the blog trustworthy? APerson on photo
did not seem
trustworthy
APerson on photo
seemed trustworthy
4. Did you find the information on the blog trustworthy? AInformation did
not seem
trustworthy
AInformation
seemed trustworthy
Source: aGefen (2002), Schlosser et al. (2006) and McKnight et al. (2002); bLoiacono et al. (2007); cAljukhadar et al. (2010), McKnight et al. (1998,
2002) and Gefen and Straub (2004)
e-commerce
websites
B2C

Table AI.
817