A multi-perspective lens on web assurance seals: contrasting vendors’ intended and consumers’ perceived effects

Abstract

Web assurance seals are actions taken by e-commerce vendors to increase their trustworthiness and alleviate consumers' concerns. In their essence, web assurance seals are a product of negotiations, adoptions, and settlements among various groups of interests (e.g., seal authorities, vendors, consumers, or governmental institutions). However, previous research has hitherto used a unilateral research perspective when studying web assurance seals (i.e., either consumer-or vendor-centric), which has acted as a gridlock for web assurance seal literature development. Drawing on signaling theory, we use a ranking-type Delphi study with three distinct, yet mutually supportive expert panels (N = 60) to compare vendors' intentions to acquire web assurance seals and perceived effects by consumers. Our results uncover a mismatch between consumers' perceptions and vendors' intentions of web assurance seals, unintended side effects as well as vendors targeting other stakeholders than consumers, ultimately providing starting points for research to move forward.

When Speed Breaks the Sound Barrier: The Effect of Cue Hierarchy on Expected Quality and Purchase Intentions Regarding Laptops

“…Indeed, while the central (or core)-periphery dichotomy shares some similarities with other approaches (see notably the cue diagnosticity framework mobilized by Purohit & Srivastava, 2001) one of its main advantages is to provide a specific methodological framework which allows us to distinguish which cues are considered as central and which ones are considered as peripheral (Lo Monaco et al, 2017, Rochira et al, 2020. Moreover, these methodologies rely directly on consumers' perceptions and not on an a priori classification created by experts and which may not accurately reflect one of the former (Löbbers, Lins, Kromat, Benlian, & Sunyaev, 2020). Yet, a direct comparison between the central-periphery dichotomy and the other cue frameworks, notably regarding their ability to predict quality assessment and product choice, is yet to be carried out in order to properly distinguish the strengths and weaknesses of this new approach.…”

Using Minecraft Education Edition to Enhance 21st Century Skills in the College Classroom: A Mixed Methods Study

“…Besides, certifications are a long established and widely acknowledged thirdparty assessment type, enabling organizations to demonstrate that their IS comply with standards. They reduce uncertainties for users as they can rely on a trusted third-party to attest that the system is safe for use, especially when system features cannot be observed (e.g., system bias) (Löbbers et al, 2020).…”

A Design Theory for Certification Presentations

“…We position our study in this user-centered stream of certification research because we adopt a user perspective to examine users' certification understanding problem and how to design IS certification presentations increasing their effects on users. Extant research's evidence of the positive effects of certifications in increasing users' perceived assurance and trust perceptions remains inconclusive (Table 1; Adam et al, 2020;Löbbers et al, 2020). One group of studies has observed that certifications have a significant positive effect on users' perceived assurance (e.g., K. Kim & Kim, 2011;Yang et al, 2006) and trust perceptions (e.g., Hoffmann et al, 2015;Mavlanova et al, 2016).…”

“…Well-known certifications include now among others "Certified Privacy" for webshops, "CSA STAR" for cloud services, and management standards for security "ISO/IEC 27001-Information security management systems". System owners can benefit from presenting well-established and recognized certifications in their websites or system user interfaces because certifications increase users' perceived assurance concerning system use and foster users' trust perceptions toward the system owner (Löbbers et al, 2020). In the context of IS use, system owners typically signal the possession of such certifications by placing assurance seals as certification presentations on their websites or in their system interfaces (Figure 1).…”

“…In the context of IS use, system owners typically signal the possession of such certifications by placing assurance seals as certification presentations on their websites or in their system interfaces (Figure 1). However, system owners witness that intended effects of certifications and corresponding seals often remain unfulfilled (Adam et al, 2020;Lansing et al, 2018;Löbbers et al, 2020), ultimately wasting financial and human resource for acquiring certifications (i.e., annual costs are usually between $2,500 and $75,000) and ongoing efforts to stay in compliance with IS certification requirements (Mavlanova et al, 2016).…”