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Merchant Facial Expressions and Customer Trust in Virtual Shopping Environment

Authors:
Nasser Nassiri
David Moore

Keywords: Virtual Shopping Environments; Trust; Avatars; Online Retailing; Virtual Salespersons

Abstract:
Trust is an essential contributor to the traditional customer experience. Online, it is harder for individuals to assess a partner’s trustworthiness, as many of the cues present in face-to-face interaction are difficult to transmit via technology. The recent advance of computer graphics and internet technology, however, potentially enables individuals to transmit these cues through their avatars in 3D e-commerce environments. The paper investigates the impact of the vendor avatar’s dynamic facial expression on consumer trust in 3D e-commerce environments. An experiment was conducted to empirically test the effects of the basic seven universal emotions of facial expression displayed by online vendor avatars on consumer trust in a 3D e-commerce environment. Respondents were able to recognize the intended emotions on the salesman avatars. They preferred to purchase from the salesman with a neutral expression.

Pages: 76 to 82

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2014

Publication date: May 25, 2014

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-3735

ISBN: 978-1-61208-339-1

Location: Venice, Italy

Dates: from May 25, 2014 to May 29, 2014