...businesses need to find ways to alleviate consumers' fears and concerns about making online purchases. This paper reports on a series of three studies focused on (1) determining the fears and concerns that online consumers have, (2) examining whether the leading brands of web assurance seals (Verisign[R], TRUSTe, Good House Keeping, and CPA WebTrust) can help alleviate those fears and concerns, and (3) gaining insights into the process by which web assurance seals can influence consumers' online purchase decisions.

This study identified seven distinct concerns that consumers had with purchasing goods/services online. Factor analysis revealed that these concerns were along two dimensions: concerns about the firm and concerns about technology. It was found that the leading brands of web assurance seals addressed only a few of the online purchasers' fears and concerns, and there was a big gap between consumers' needs for assurance and what they felt was being offered by the web seals. Further, it was also found that the process by which web assurance seals influenced consumers' online purchase behavior involved recognition of and familiarity with a particular web assurance seal, and possibly the number of associations consumers made with a particular web assurance seal.

Keywords: web assurance seals; CPA WebTrust; web assurance; online purchase behavior; familiarity.

Data Availability: Please contact first author.

I. INTRODUCTION

Counter to many beliefs, Internet commerce is on the rise. According to a recently published study conducted by IDC (2001), "nearly 1 billion people, about 15 percent of the world's population, will be using the Internet by 2005. Their use will fuel more than $5 trillion in Internet commerce, a staggering 70 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from Internet spending of $354 billion in 2000." This growth presents a vast opportunity for businesses involved in e-commerce. To tap into this Internet commerce explosion, online businesses need to not only attract online consumers to their web sites, but also be able to convince those online consumers to buy. Potential customers need to feel comfortable in placing an order with the online business. Prior studies (Kovar et al. 2000; Cranor et al. 1999) show that fears and concerns of purchasing online inhibit online consumers' purchasing decisions. There are too many reports about hackers breaking into web sites and viewing sensitive information, and about comp anies putting unwanted information on consumers' computers through cookies. A Business Week (2000) Harris Poll found that 41 percent of online shoppers were very concerned over the use of personal information, up from 31 percent just two years prior. These fears and concerns may be real or perceived; however, they are relevant to online consumers in their decision process.

One way to address the fears and concerns of online consumers is to establish a level of "trust" between consumers and online businesses. The importance of trust in exchange transactions has been evidenced in the marketing literature. Ganesan (1994) and Doney and Cannon (1997) each found that trust is a key determinant of a successful buyer-seller relationship. Additionally, Morgan and Hunt (1994) found that trust influenced the commitment of the parties to a relationship. The perception of trust was also found to influence transactions in an online environment. Jarvenpaa et al. (2000) found that store trustworthiness and perception of risk influenced the willingness to purchase.

The key in the online environment is to be able to generate feelings of trust and reduced risk in consumers. One method to establish the level of trust necessary to result in an online purchase is to provide potential customers with signals that ease their concerns and fears. Kirmani and Rao (2000) provide a detailed discussion of the use of signals by firms to enhance consumers' perceptions of their products' quality, which in turn, eases consumers' concerns about product quality. Mauldin and Arunachalam (2001) looked at several signals of web assurance and their impact on online purchase intentions. They felt that one form of assurance might be provided through the use of a web assurance seal placed on the online business's web site. Kovar et al. (2000) found that web assurance seals can influence consumers' intent to make online purchases. The use of an assurance seal may serve to ease the consumers' concerns and fears and foster online purchases. The online assurance seal may serve to instill trust in the same fashion as an independent audit instills trust in financial markets. Hunton et al. (2000) found that electronic commerce assurance resulted in significant increases in earnings forecasts and stock price estimates performed by financial analysts. These findings suggest that online assurance seals are viewed as positive news for online businesses, and that the presence of an online assurance seal should result in increased profits.

There are many different web assurance seals available from which online businesses can choose. The key for online businesses in the selection process is to choose the assurance seal that will best fulfill the needs of the potential online consumers. Consumers need to have trust in the online business before they will purchase online from the business, and a strong brand in the marketplace tends to increase consumer trust. An online business needs to increase the strength of its brand and the use of an assurance seal may serve as the tool to accomplish the strengthening. If an online business can significantly strengthen its brand through an assurance seal, then the online business might be able to increase its market share.

This paper consists of three separate studies related to consumers' fears and concerns of purchasing online and their perceptions of online assurance seals. Some of the more popular web assurance seals were identified and used in the studies. Study 1 was exploratory in nature, and was carried out to determine consumers' fears and concerns about making online purchases and identify their perceptions of various brands of web assurance seals. In Study 2, a web-based survey was administered to a random sample of consumers to gain insights into the relative effectiveness of different web assurance seals that are found on web sites. The focus was on determining what fears and concerns the consumers had toward purchasing online, and whether an assurance seal would ease those fears and concerns and thereby influence the consumers' decisions to purchase online. Additionally, several of the popular assurance seals were tested to determine if the seals address the online purchasers' fears and concerns. In addition to un derstanding the effectiveness of various web assurance seals, the study also enabled testing propositions (see below) about the process by which web seals may influence consumer behavior at a web site. Study 3 was designed to survey a sample of consumers who were selected based upon their familiarity and associations with one of the web assurance seals--CPA WebTrust.

The next section provides a review of the relevant marketing literature to aid in understanding why and how web assurance seals can influence consumer behavior. In particular, we reviewed marketing literature where researchers examined the process by which a brand name influences consumer behavior. The theories examined and research findings in this literature were the basis for the design of the three studies.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

The concept of "customer-based brand equity" has garnered a lot of attention in the marketing literature in recent years. Marketing researchers feel this term captures the essence of why certain brands are successful in the marketplace while others are less successful. Customer-based brand equity has been defined as "the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand" (Keller 1993; Krishnan 1996). It is the set of assets or liabilities linked to a brand, its name, or symbol that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm's customers (Aaker 1991).

This concept can be easily transferred to the appearance of a web assurance seal on a business's web site. The customer-based brand equity of a particular brand of web assurance seal (e.g., CPA WebTrust) would be the difference in consumer reactions or behavior at a web site when a particular web assurance seal is displayed compared to their reactions or behavior at the same web site if an unknown or a fictitious web assurance seal was displayed. In other words, customer-based brand equity of a certain brand of web assurance seal would capture the effectiveness of that web assurance seal by influencing consumer behavior at any web site.

Our review of the brand equity literature improves our understanding of the process by which web assurance seals are likely to influence consumers' online purchasing decisions. This helps us identify the dimensions of brand equity, which in turn provides insights into the effectiveness of different web assurance seals.

Brand Awareness

The construct of brand knowledge lies at the heart of the above definition of brand equity. Brand knowledge has been defined as having two components: brand awareness (a related but separate concept called brand familiarity is also known to affect consumer behavior) and brand image (Keller 1993). Brand awareness is the consumers' ability to recognize or recall a brand name. Recall is generally considered to be a more stringent test of awareness than recognition, as consumers could possibly recognize a particular brand when they see it in a store, but may not recall that brand in an awareness test. This notion is also supported by research in psychology on memory processes, which suggests that recall of information involves a two-stage retrieval process called generation-discrimination, i.e., generation of information from memory and discrimination among the items of generated information to identify the correct information for the task being performed. Recognition, on the other hand, only involves the discrim ination phase as the stimulus is presented to a person, and they have to identify whether it has been seen before (i.e., there is no generation phase). It has been argued that in most marketing contexts, brand recognition (even in the absence of brand recall) is adequate to influence consumer behavior (Singh et al. 1988). In the context of web assurance seals, the above discussion leads to the following proposition:

P1: There is a relationship between brand recognition of a web assurance seal and the brand's ability to influence consumers' online purchase decisions.

A concept similar to recognition is brand familiarity, which has been defined as the number of product-related experiences accumulated by a consumer (through product usage, advertising, etc.) (Alba and Hutchinson 1987) and in the literature has been measured by directly asking consumers the extent to which they are familiar with a brand. It is possible for consumers to feel that a brand appears to be familiar even though they are not able to recognize it with certainty. Prior research has shown that consumers' feelings of familiarity with a brand can also influence their evaluations and image of that brand. Allison and Uhl (1964) had beer drinkers with well-established preferences rate several brands in a blind taste test and then again when the brands were identified. They found that the beer drinkers tended to rate the taste of their preferred brand significantly higher when it was identified than they did in the blind taste test. In other research, Zajonc...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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