Online Trust: An International Study Of Subjects' Willingness to Shop at Online Merchants, Including The Effects of Promises and of Third Party Guarantees

Significant differences exist among consumers' online shopping behavior in different international markets. This paper compares consumer behavior in four different markets: (1) The US, the largest and most mature market, (2) Germany, a similarly advanced western market (3) China, the fastest growing online market, but one where consumers are plagued by incidents of counterfeits, forgeries, and spoiled or defective items, and (4) Singapore, an advanced market, culturally similar in some ways to China, but with a strong legal system. We performed laboratory experiments simultaneously in all four countries. We used three experimental treatments: (1) No assurances of product quality or authenticity, (2) promises of quality and authenticity, and (3) promises backed up by third party assurances. We examined subjects' responses for all three treatments, and for vendors' with different degrees of riskiness. We confirmed that significant differences exist in consumer behavior, but these differences were not always what we expected. Chinese consumers do appear to have trust in their best online vendors. US consumers appear to treat online shopping very similarly to the way they treat shopping in physical venues.EICPCI-S(ISTP)clemons@wharton.upenn.edu; wilsonjs@wharton.upenn.edu; matt@bwl.lmu.de; thess@bwl.lmu.de; fren@gsm.pku.edu.cn; jinfujie@wharton.upenn.edu5220-52292016-Marc