The impact of webshop familiarity and online customer review valence on customers’ trust and purchase, word-of-mouth, and information seeking intentions

In most online commercial transactions, customers’ feeling of uncertainty about the success of an exchange can be attributed to its faceless and intangible character (Beldad et al. 2010). Uncertainty eventually may lead people to search for certain cues to minimize uncertainty’s discomforting effect and to aid them in deciding whether or not to engage in an exchange in which success is not guaranteed. Whenever people encounter uncertainty in an online exchange, they look for cues that could increase their confidence in the exchange partners. These confidence-enhancing cues or trustworthiness features, according to Beldad et al. (2010), may be either attributes of the exchange partner (e.g., reputation) or characteristics of the channel used for the online exchange (e.g., website design, security seals).