Understanding E-Commerce Assurance Seals: An Analytical Framework

Abstract

Trust seals provide a business assurance service in e-commerce. Vendors employ trust seals to increase the perception of their trustworthiness. In this paper, we create an analytical framework that we use to group trust seals into five categories: (1) comprehensive certificate provider, (2) seller evaluation service, (3) market evaluator, (4) market assurance service, and (5) niche service. Our framework provides an easy means for online shoppers to differentiate trust seals and motivate seal providers to develop new services.