earticle

영어

Information technology has changed the marketplace and its environment in many different directions including e-commerce. One of the biggest challenges many firms have faced in the e-commerce era are how to attain customers’ trust and maintain their trust for a long term mutual benefits. One of the firms’ recent noticeable approaches to increase and manage online trust is implementing a trustmark on their website. Trustmarks are visual and iconic seals endorsed by the third-parties to assure security and privacy of the firms’ websites. This type of an e-commerce-specific certification from the third-parties has been proven to have a positive impact on trust and trustworthiness of the endorsed web-based company. Previous research interests on trustmark have been limited to the identification of the very existence of the relationship between adoption of trustmark and its effects such as online trust. Limited research interests resulted in limited understanding on trustmark and its effects on marketing results. Although the fact that trustmark does have positive effects on online trust, little is known yet about how such effects can happen and how they could be improved. Authors tried to extend our understanding on trustmark by including new dependant variable, product trust and comparing the relative effects of different types of trustmarks on dependant variables. This study confirms the affirmative relationship between a trustmark and trust of the website(online trust) where the trustmark engraved. Furthermore, the direct relationship between a trustmark and trust of the product placed on the website has been investigated and proven in this study. In addition, three types of trustmarks (e.g., governmental affiliated organization, industry experts, and typical consumer reviewers) have been tested for their differentiated influence on perceptions of two important constructs of customers: online trust and product trust. As results, varied impacts of different trustmarks have been observed through empirical testing. This study contributed both academically and managerially to the understanding and utilizing of trustmarks. Academically, this study extended the research interest from the mere confirming of trustmarks effects on resulting variables to the process analysis of the effects. Managerially this study provide some practical tips to improve trustmarks effect on marketing results. Users tend to have higher trust on the industry expert and government backed trustmark over consumer reviewers one. For example, an industry expert-driven trustmark may be the most trustable and efficient one with government taking supervising role.

한국어

정보화 혁명은 마케팅 환경에 큰 변화를 가져왔다. 가장 큰 변화 중 하나는 온라인 환경에서 신뢰를 확보하고 활용해야 하는 새로운 과제가 기업들에게 제시되었다는 것이다. 온라인상에서 신뢰를 확보 및 관리하는 대표적인 수단으로 온라인 인증마크(Trustmark)가 있다. 온라인 인증마크는 제 3의 주체가 웹사이트의 보안, 서비스 품질 등을 보증하는 것으로 온라인 기업의 신뢰에 긍정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 알려져 있다. 온라인 인증마크에 대한 기존 연구는 주로 온라인 인증마크의 온라인 신뢰 유발 능력에 관한 검증에만 초점을 맞추어왔다. 이에 본 연구는 과거 연구에서 시도되지 않았던 온라인 인증마크 유형별 상대적 영향력 비교를 통해 온라인 인증마크의 온라인 신뢰에 대한 영향을 확인하고 이 영향이 제품 신뢰까지 전이 될 수 있음을 제시하였다. 연구 결과 인증마크의 제시가 온라인 신뢰와 제품 신뢰에 긍정적인 영향을 미침을 증명되었고 온라인 인증마크 유형별로 그 영향력에 차이가 있음을 확인 하였다. 또한 온라인 신뢰가 제품 신뢰로 전이되는 것도 입증되었다. 본 연구는 온라인 인증마크의 온라인 신뢰 및 제품 신뢰에 대한 이해를 확장했다는 학술적 의미를 가지고 있으며, 온라인 인증마크의 전략적 활용에 대한 실무적 시사점을 갖는다