Page 108 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

3.8 Online Purchasing Decision Aids 87

Many websites rate various e-tailers and online products Concerns About Reviews, Ratings,
based on multiple criteria. Bizrate (bizrate.com) and and Recommendations
Consumer Reports Online (consumerreports.org) are well-
known rating sites. Bizrate.com organized a network of Some people raise the issue of how accurate reported reviews
shoppers that reports on various sellers and uses the com- and recommendations are. On some sites, fake reviews and
piled results in its evaluations. Note that different rating sites claims are suspected to encompass 30–40% of the total
provide different rankings. Alexa Internet, Inc. (alexa.com; reviews. In 2012, however, Yelp unveiled its Consumer Alerts,
an Amazon.com company) computes Web traffic rank, see which shows warnings to users when they find businesses
alexa.com/pro/insight. who have paid for reviews (see webpronews.com/just-how-
bad-is-yelps-fake-review-problem-2014-01). As of mid-
January 2014, Yelp has issued almost 300 Consumer Alerts.
Comparison Shopping Websites (For an example of a Consumer Alert, see searchengineland.
com/yelp-turns-up-the-heat-285-consumer- alerts- issued-
A large number of websites provide price comparisons for over-fake-reviews-181706.) There is also a concern about
products and services (e.g., online tickets, cruises). Online businesses paying money to bloggers for producing reviews.
retailers such as Amazon.com also provide price comparisons Some claim that such reviews may be biased. Another con-
and so do many other sites (e.g., nextag.com, pricegrabber. cern is that in cases of a small number of reviewers, a bias
com, mysimon.com). FreePriceAlerts.com (freeprice alerts. (positive or negative) may exist. Finally, it is wise to look at
com) is a price comparison app. bloggers’ review sites. (For a list of the top 50 review blogs,
see Sala 2012.) As a side note, Amazon.com has compiled a
list of the “Funniest Reviews” posted on their site, on products
Trust Verification Sites ranging from banana slicers to horsehead masks (see amazon.
com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1001250201).
With so many sellers online, many consumers are not sure
whom they should trust. A number of companies evaluate
and verify the trustworthiness of various e-tailers. One such Other Shopping Assisting Tools
company is TRUSTe (truste.com). The TRUSTe seal appears
at the bottom of each TRUSTe-approved e-tailer’s website. Other digital intermediaries assist buyers or sellers, or both,
E-tailers pay TRUSTe for the use of the seal (which they call with research and purchase processes. For example, escrow
a “trustmark”). TRUSTe’s 1300-plus members hope that services (e.g., escrow.com and abnamro.com/en) assist
consumers will use the seal as an assurance and as a proxy buyers and sellers with the exchange of items and money. A
for actual research into their conduct of business, privacy trusted third party frequently is needed to facilitate the proper
policy, and personal information protection. Trust sites grant exchange of money and goods, or to verify information.
a trust seal for a business to display, demonstrating to cus- (Remember that trading partners usually do not even see each
tomers the level of quality. For types see Trust Seal in other.) Escrow sites may also provide payment- processing
Wikipedia. TRUSTe now offers a service for mobile devices, support, as well as letters of credit (see Chapter 11).
called TRUSTed apps (truste.com/products-and-services/
enterprise-privacy/TRUSTed-apps), which provide ongo- • Similar to Craigslist, Angie’s List (angieslist.com) helps
ing monitoring and safeguarding of brands to ensure that its members find high quality service companies and
merchants’ mobile apps are trusted by consumers. health care professional services in over 700 categories.
Some comprehensive trust verification sites are Symantec Although there is a fee, its advantage over free review
Corporation’s VeriSign (verisign.com) and BBBOnline sites is there are no anonymous reviews and their data is
(bbb.org). VeriSign tends to be the most widely used. Other certified “so you get the whole story” (see angieslist.
sources of trust verification include Secure Assure (secure- com/how-it-works.htm). Angieslist.com also provides a
assure.co.uk), which charges yearly fees. In addition, Ernst complaint resolution service and discounts from highly
& Young, the global public accounting firm, has services for rated service companies. They also offer live support
auditing e-tailers in order to offer some guarantee of the through a call center.
integrity of their business practices. Other sites are trust- • To organize store information in a standard, easy to see,
guard.com and trust-verified.org. For the results of a 2013 and understandable format, vendors can use tools such as
survey on which site seal people trust the most (conducted facebook.com/thefind. Shoppers can use the same tools
using Google Consumer Surveys, and reported at baymard. to search once and compare products at every store, find-
com/blog/site-seal-trust). ing the best deals.