First impressions: emotional and cognitive factors underlying judgments of trust e-commerce

  • Authors:
  • Andrea Basso;David Goldberg;Steven Greenspan;David Weimer

  • Affiliations:
  • AT&T Labs - Research, Florham Park, NJ;AT&T Labs - Research, Florham Park, NJ;AT&T Labs - Research, Florham Park, NJ;AT&T Labs - Research, Florham Park, NJ

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 3rd ACM conference on Electronic Commerce
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Different communication media create different shopping experiences, e.g., the phone vs. the web. In this study, we examined the early formation of trust and the likelihood that a shopper will return to a website for subsequent purchases. Consumers were asked to select a blender as a gift for someone they knew using one of four types of user interfaces: (1) a standard web interface with no audio or real time interpersonal communication, (2) a web interface with text and audio descriptions of the products, (3) a web interface augmented with Instant Messaging and the ability of a sales agent to push web pages to the customer's web browser, and (4) a TV-based application that allowed a salesperson to talk to the customer while pushing catalog items to the customer's TV. Results indicate that real-time interactivity, but not voice, increased judgments of friendliness and of the trustworthiness of the salesperson. In this paper we discuss these and other results, and their implications for e-commerce.