Evaluation of the credibility of internet shopping in the UK
| Published date | 07 August 2009 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520910985738 |
| Date | 07 August 2009 |
| Pages | 805-826 |
| Author | Natalie Clewley,Sherry Y. Chen,Xiaohui Liu |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Evaluation of the credibility of
internet shopping in the UK
Natalie Clewley, Sherry Y. Chen and Xiaohui Liu
School of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics,
Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the credibility of internet shopping. Credibility,
which refers to the believability of information, is an important consideration of internet shopping.
Design/methodology/approach – The evaluation is conducted by incorporating Fogg’s 10
Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility into Nielsen’s heuristic evaluation. Furthermore, security and
individualisation are considered as additional heuristics. Evaluation criteria are developed based on
these 12 heuristics. Three UK car insurance web sites are selected for evaluation, including the AA,
Norwich Union and Tesco.
Findings – The results show that the Norwich Union site seems to be the most credible while the
Tesco site appears to be the least credible. The most significant credibility problems are found to lie in
the areas of “trustworthiness”, “expertise” and “real-world feel”. In other words, these three areas are
key issues for future improvement of these sites.
Originality/value – This paper contributes to the literature by providing a set of credibility design
guidelines, which can be used to support the improved development of future internet shopping
designs, especially car insurance web sites.
Keywords Internet shopping,User interfaces, Trust, UnitedKingdom
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The internet is fast becoming an integral feature of our day-to-day lives. In particular,
there is enormous potential to purchase goods and services through the internet
(Cheung and Lee, 2006). On the one hand, internet shopping allows users to do
transactions 24 hours a day, all year round, from almost any place. On the other hand,
the large amount of product information on the web presents great challenges to users
(Huang et al., 2003). This is partly due to the fact that there is an increased freedom to
view, create and edit web content. In other words, information posted on the web lacks
the traditional forms of “gatekeepers” (Flanagin and Metzger, 2007). This brings rising
uncertainty around the quality of product information on the web – can the
information be trusted, is the information believable and unbiased, and can the
sponsors be trusted to provide the products and services as advertised? Judgements
about the quality of web information should therefore be evaluated for credibility.
Credibility can be defined as the believability of the information – information that
is believable is seen as being credible (Fogg and Tseng, 1999). If sources are credible,
they are described as being trustworthy and having expertise (Self, 1996).
Trustworthiness refers to morality whereas expertise looks at the perceived
knowledge and skill of the source (Fogg and Tseng, 1999). Based on these
definitions, evaluating the credibility of an internet shop involves making an
assessment of both the trustworthiness of and expertise in information published on
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Credibility of
internet
shopping
805
Refereed article received
29 August 2008
Approved for publication
20 March 2009
Online Information Review
Vol. 33 No. 4, 2009
pp. 805-826
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684520910985738
the web (i.e. their web site) – being perceived as highly credible involves having high
levels of both dimensions.
Of these two dimensions, trustworthiness is particularly important for web
information, which can be perceived as less reliable than traditional source s of
information (Flanagin and Metzger, 2007). In fact, some research has suggested that
users believe that most of the information on the web is not trustworthy (McKnight
and Macmar, 2006). Consumers’ lack of trust has been recognised as a major barrier to
the adoption and growth of e-commerce (Egger, 2000). Once users feel the source,
quality or integrity of information has been questioned, it is almost impossible to
regain credibility (Fogg and Tseng, 1999). In other words, they will leave the site and
take their business elsewhere if users cannot find the satisfactory credibility cues.
However, unlike traditional shopping, the credibility cues of internet shopping lie
mainly within the interface because there is no face-to-face contact. Thus, evaluating
the credibility of an internet shop requires looking at the interface of the web site.
The heuristic approach is a proven quick and simple method for evaluating an
interface (Nielsen and Molich, 1990). The study presented in this paper extended
Nielsen’s heuristics to assess the credibility of internet shopping. In particular, this
study focused on sites offering car insurance online because users of such web sites are
faced with making an important financial decision. Therefore, the credibility of the
information provided should be evaluated in order to assess the trustworthiness and
expertise of the company, and thus their reliability.
Theoretical background
Past research has shown that usability plays an important role in the design of web
sites (e.g. Nathan et al., 2008). A number of methods can be used to evaluate usability.
Of these methods, Nielsen’s heuristic approach is most commonly used in usability
evaluation because it can be used effectively by novices and experts alike and can be
performed at any stage of the development lifecycle (Nielsen, 1994). This method has
also been used for the assessment of the usability of internet shopping. For example,
Chen and Macredie (2005) assessed the usability of internet supermarkets based on
Nielsen’s heuristics. The results of their study showed that usability problems were
mainly found in the areas of “user control and freedom” and “help and documentation”.
Other issues such as security and consumerism have also been shown to affect
credibility on the web (Walther et al., 2004). So when fraud and low-quality information
make consumers more hesitant to divulge their trust, a usable web site is not sufficient.
In other words, the design of web sites must also consider credibility (Fogg, 2003). To
address this issue, Fogg and colleagues at the Stanford Web Credibility Project
conducted a series of online surveys to find which design elements positively or
negatively influence credibility. In 2000, they conducted a large-scale online survey of
more than 1,400 web users to find a number of design elements that influence
credibility perceptions. Real-world feel, ease of use, expertise, trustworthiness and
message tailoring were found to have a positive influence, whereas commercial
implications and amateurism were found to have a negative influence (Fogg et al.,
2001). Based on the findings of this study, Fogg et al. (2001) developed several
guidelines, which were further expanded into a comprehensive list to create the
Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility (Fogg, 2002), as shown in Table I.
OIR
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