How Presentation Flaws Affect Perceived Site Quality, Trust, and Intention to Purchase from an Online Store

Although there has been a great deal of research on impression formation, little application of that research has been made to electronic commerce. A research model was constructed that hypothesized errors, poor style, and incompleteness to be inversely related to the users' level of perceived quality of an online store. Further, this perceived quality of the online store's Web site would be directly related to users' trust in the store and, ultimately, to users' intentions to purchase from the store. An experimental study with 272 undergraduate and graduate student volunteers supported all the hypotheses. In addition, it was found that the relationship between the factors and perceived quality was mediated by the perception of the flaws. The perception of flaws rather than the actual flaws influenced users' perception of quality. Supplemental analysis also seemed to indicate a pattern of diminishing effects with each subsequent flaw.