Building Trust in eCommerce: An Experimental Study of Social-Cue Design Dimensions

Abstract

Integrating diverse social media cues such as photos, video streaming, and social networking has become a common marketing strategy to boost consumer trust in an online setting. In this paper, we study the influence of social-cue design dimensions such as a facial photo, a video stream, and social networking site on trust through an experiment. Our results show that online retailers can enhance consumer trust and stimulate a clear purchase intention by embedding social media cues into a web interface.