A major problem facing the full deployment of business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce is the development of trust on the side of the consumer. People develop trust in a business through their own previous experience with that business or through reports about that business from trusted third parties or other consumers. While a great deal of effort has been spent on privacy and secure transactions, resulting in seals of approvals and trustmarks, little has been done in the way of developing systems that will assure the consumer that the e-commerce site with which they are dealing is “legitimate” in such things as delivery, return policies, etc. A problem with seals and trustmarks is that they are an “all-or-nothing” approach and give a single value (the seal). A more flexible system is required that rates e-commerce sites along multiple dimensions and allows the consumer to determine which dimension(s) is of importance at that moment in time. These rating should be done by truste...
Michael A. Shepherd, Anil Dhonde, Carolyn R. Watte