From Structural Assurances to Trusting Beliefs: Validating Persuasion Principles in the Context of Online Shopping

The topic of shopping attitude has received long lasing attention in the context of e-commerce. Previous studies have elucidated the different facets of online shopping attitude and have overemphasized a prevalent assertion on the relationship between web design artifacts and consumers’ psychological responses. However, the imitability of web design in practice makes no differentiation among a glut of shopping websites and probably leads to revenue declination due to the fact that the instability of attitude frequently leads to attitudinal ambivalence. Hence, understanding how to strengthen consumers’ attitudes toward online shopping should be fruitful for remedying attitude inconsistency in e-commerce. The current study extended related research by examining the simultaneous effects of trusting beliefs on consumers’ attitudes toward online shopping. We adopted the concept of structural assurance and the principles of persuasion as the theoretical underpinnings. The proposed model is expected to contribute to relevant literature by offering theoretical contributions and managerial implications that can help both researchers and online retailers to understand more clearly how consumers develop their attitudes toward shopping online.