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A viral advertising message has two different sources: the advertiser as the message creator and a sender as the message distributor. This study examined the influence of sender trust and advertiser trust on four stages of viral advertising effects. Results from a field experiment demonstrated that sender trust and advertiser trust have differential influences on effect stages. Significant interaction effects show that if a viral ad is sent by a trusted sender, the influence of advertiser trust becomes non-significant or reduced, suggesting that a viral ad from a trusted sender can overcome the handicap a less trusted advertiser might have., In the interactive media environment, consumers not only have more control over when and how they are exposed to and process advertising messages but also actively generate and spread marketplace [...]

Despite extensive interdisciplinary research, trust has been the subject of little systematic study in advertising, though investigations have incorporated and measured the construct. This study was conducted to develop a reliable and valid measure of the trust-in-advertising construct, using a three-stage, nine-step research design. The design produced the ADTRUST Scale, a 20-item Likert-formatted measure, and revealed that trust in advertising is a multidimensional construct (i.e., it has cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions) with four distinct factors: reliability, usefulness, affect, and willingness to rely on. The ADTRUST Scale sufficiently represents the four trust factors; exhibits high reliability and concurrent, convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity; and reflects a combination of(l) consumer perception of reliability and usefulness of advertising, (2) consumer affect toward advertising, and (3) consumer willingness to rely on advertising for decision making. The operational and practical significance of the results are discussed and suggestions for future research are presented., Trust has long been recognized as an important element of human relations (e.g., Gambetta 1988; Luhmann 1980). The construct has been extensively investigated over several decades by behavioral and social [...]

This paper reports the results of two studies examining the potential for advertising to enhance a product's perceived trustworthiness. We find that prior experience is not an essential prerequisite for the seeds of trust to be planted, as advertising with a simple trust appeal for an unknown brand was able to enhance the perceived trustworthiness of the advertised brand. It is interesting to note that advertising was able to enhance a brand's perceived trustworthiness even in the absence of any overt trust claims. Finally, the effectiveness of simplistic trust appeals was found to be contingent on the presence of additional advertising claims about the brand's competency and benevolence., Research has found that trust affects consumers' value perceptions (Sirdeshmukh, Singh, and Sabol 2002), impacts consumers' choices (Erdem and Swait 2004), and enhances brand commitment and loyalty (Chaudhuri and Holbrook [...]

No readily available scales exist that are appropriate to the measurement of trust in direct selling. This paper presents a conceptualization of trust that focuses on its nature and presents it as an affect--that is, a combination of attitudes and emotions. To develop a scale that reflects this approach, a two-country study is conducted looking at the perceptions of buyers regarding the trust they place in direct selling salespeople. Three distinct measures of trust and two related measures, based on scales developed for use in contexts other than direct selling, are utilized. The measurement properties of all five are shown to be adequate; however, differences are apparent in their robustness and in the pattern of responses in the two countries. Moreover, one measure (Trust 3) clearly is inferior to the other measures. The paper concludes with a discussion of the effectiveness of these measures of trust and suggestions for future refinements to them., Since the early 1990s, there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of ongoing relationships in such diverse areas as industrial marketing (e.g., Axelsson and Easton 1992; Hakansson 1982; [...]

This paper proposes an expanded view of industrial buyer-seller similarity. Past research indicates that business buyers may judge their degree of similarity with a salesperson in terms of observable characteristics (physical attributes and behavior) and internal characteristics (perceptions, attitudes, and values). The synthesis of findings suggests that internal similarity can increase a business buyer's willingness to trust a salesperson and follow the salesperson's guidance and, therefore, increase the industrial salesperson's effectiveness. In contrast, the literature reviewed also indicates that, under most circumstances, observable similarity exerts a negligible influence on a business buyer's perceptions or a salesperson's effectiveness. Thus, the key finding is that it is more important for buyers and sellers to think alike than to look alike. An implication is that managers will not derive a substantial benefit from simply matching salespeople and buyers demographically. Indeed, improvements to a sales force's performance can be gained by hiring salespeople who possess the flexibility to identify potential areas of internal similarity and training them to build upon those issues to foster positive perceptions with buyers., Introduction A ubiquitous issue facing industrial sales managers is the ongoing need to enhance sales force effectiveness. Researchers have attempted to identify variables that are positively associated with salesperson performance [...]