Source equivocality and claim verifiability in remote product evaluation.

摘要

This dissertation investigates the tensions arising from these two fundamental features of the online environment—the decoupling of sources and messages, and of messages and their referents—specifically in the context of remote product evaluation. In a series of experiments, we investigate both the issue of appropriately orienting towards sources in the online environment, as well as the issue of evaluating unobservable product quality in electronic commerce.;In an initial pair of experiments, we investigate the issue of source orientation in information retrieval, finding evidence that information seekers (a) perceive results returned by a single search engine to be more similar to one another than if those same results are gathered from multiple, distinct search engines, and (b) process results differently in the two contexts. The pattern of results suggests that participants expect greater heterogeneity in information quality and consequently process information more deeply if it is provided by multiple (unfamiliar) search engines than from a single search engine. We discuss these results in the context of a review of the literature relevant to source equivocality in online environments and the task of appropriately orienting towards sources.;We then review the literature relevant to the task of remote assessment of product claims in electronic commerce, with special interest in the second critical variable in this work, namely the extent to which various product claims can be easily verified online, in a store, or only after product purchase. In a second pair of experiments, we investigate the relationship between source equivocality and claim verifiability, rigorously controlling for various aspects of the source logos and product descriptions used, going beyond the current literature in teasing apart the effects of source equivocality and claim verifiability in and of themselves.;First, in a 3 (source equivocality) X 3 (claim verifiability) repeated measures experiment, we vary: (1) the presence of absence of a site operator logo, and when present, the proximity of the logo to a product description; and (2) the relative verifiability of the statements made in the product description, finding that the effect of the relative verifiability of claims on consumer response varied as a function of the ambiguity and proximity of a site operator logo. In particular, source proximity resulted in significantly more positive responses from participants when the product claims were either verifiable immediately online or expected to be so in-store, but there was no effect of source proximity or presence when the product claims could not be verified until post-purchase. Surprisingly, no source logo resulted in generally more positive responses than a non-proximate logo, attributable to the condition in which product claims were verifiable online. We discuss these results in terms of a critical tradeoff between gathering information regarding unobservable product quality and gathering information regarding unknown sources with more or less equivocal accountability.;The second experiment investigating the relationship between source equivocality and claim verifiability compares the usage of biased corporate sources and less-biased review sources in presenting product descriptions composed of each of the three types of product claims, using a 2 (source type) X 3 (claim verifiability) mixed experimental design. In this experiment, we find a different pattern of results for the corporate and review site sources. Consistent with the first experiment, participant responses toward the product were generally more favorable when a corporate source's product description was composed of immediately verifiable claims, rather than claims which could not be verified until post-purchase.;Generally, we find that the influence of the claim types used in a product description can vary as a function of the equivocality of source signals (if present). In the first experiment, the important variable was the mere presence and (if present) the proximity of an unfamiliar source signal, and in the second experiment, the important variable was the type of unfamiliar source (either a presumably biased corporate source with product knowledge, or a presumably less biased review source). We relate these results to the critical problems of appropriately orienting towards source signals in the online environment and determining the relationships between source signals and content. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).