Influence Of Trust-Enhancing Signals On Signal Processing In B2c E-Commerce

Despite remarkable economic growth and high customer popularity, low conversion rates bear witness to an unexploited potential lying in the B2C e-Commerce sector. While a lack of online consumer trust in the website vendor is identified as a major obstacle to customer purchasing decisions, several trust-enhancing signals have been established. These website elements carry surrogate information about product quality, seller quality and data protection. The objective of this paper is to understand whether and how different categories of trust-enhancing signals distinctly influence trustworthiness assessments of competence, benevolence and integrity and how trusting beliefs influence buying intentions. Results refer to the relevance of product quality signals for the perceived competence of a website and the importance of trusting beliefs for the formation of buying intentions. These findings are holding theoretical and practical implications for online retailers concerning the efficient use of the limited advertising space in e-Commerce.