Citation

Giebelhausen M, Novak TP. J. Bus. Res. 2012; 65(6): 840-842.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, College of Business Administration, University of Georgia)

DOI

10.1016/j.jbusres.2011.01.004

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Trust is an essential ingredient for commercial success on the Web. "Shopping aggregator" websites such as eBay provide a mechanism for measuring trust in the vendor in the form of online shoppers' positive feedback ratings. This real-world experiment conducted on eBay demonstrates that although coupled with a very high trust rating, the inclusion of an explicitly sexual illustration in shopping aggregator gallery listings dramatically increases auction traffic but in most cases reduces the dollar amount of the winning auction bid, thereby lowering the return to the seller. Traffic increase but lower selling price resulted even for products that could arguably use a sexual appeal (although these products were targeted to women). (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.