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The TPO Endorsements & Consumer Evaluation of Online Store                                                                      Page  of
THE TPO ENDORSEMENTS AND CONSUMER EVALUATION OF A WEB STORE: DO SEAL, CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS, AND NEWS CLIP AFFECT CONSUMERS DIFFERENTLY?
Alex Wang, Department of Advertising, College of Communication, University of Texas at Austin, CMA 7.142, Austin, TX 78712-1092, (512) 236-8929, <a href="/cgi-bin/wa?LOGON=A3%3Dind0209C%26L%3DAEJMC%26E%3D8bit%26P%3D1999221%26B%3D--%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D_2737744%253D%253D_%26T%3Dtext%252Fplain%3B%2520charset%3Diso-8859-1" >[log in to unmask]</a>
ABSTRACT
Is there any distinction among TPO endorsements?  Do consumers process TPO endorsements differently?  This study investigated how consumers evaluate a commercial Web store by examining three types of TPO endorsements, a seal, customer testimonials, and a news clip.  The laboratory experiment tested several hypotheses on the determinants of a consumer's favorable evaluation toward a Web store.  The findings suggested that consumers evaluated a Web store by focusing on trust of TPO endorsements to form their attitude toward shopping at the Web store.  Then the attitude influenced their purchase intentions.  The result was encouraging as if TPO endorsements increased a consumer's purchase intention when either one of the TPO endorsements was present to serve as a contextual cue.  However, TPO endorsements worked in different ways.  The news clip was clearly a better determinant of building trust while seal mostly increased a consumer's positive attitude toward a Web store.  Improving
 the usage of various TPO endorsements in Web message planning might be effective in helping advertisers improve their message persuasion in different aspects of online purchasing.

KEYWORDS.  Seal, Customer testimonials, news clip, online shopping, trust and purchase intention, integrated marketing communications

 INTRODUCTION
Despite widespread acceptance among practitioners and general acknowledgement by academicians (Hallahan, 1999a; Alcalay & Taplin, 1989; Schudson, 1984), little empirical research has been conducted to test claims about third-party organization (TPO) endorsements more generally.  In addition, "very few academic studies have examined the effects of TPO endorsements that compares products and the results are equivocal" (Dean & Biswas, 2001, p. 42).  According to Dean and Biswas (2001), TPO endorsements can take one of three general forms.  A product or a service can be ranked and evaluated against competing products or services in its class based on the third-party publication that possesses expertise and trustworthiness.  A product or service can be awarded a seal of approval by the TPO.  Finally, "a subjective, noncomparative statement is made about one or more product attributes." (p. 42).  The notion that media, organizations, and consumers provide endorsements of the topics they
 cover, the companies they endorse, and the products they like is rooted in early theories about the role of TPO endorsements in persuasion.  However, do consumers process these TPO endorsements differently?
Oskamp (1991) found that the media could invest obscure, nonentities with an importance that is out of proportion to real life, so that audiences pay attention to these people, organizations and causes.  Media also can bestow on newsmakers the authority of being an object of public interest (Habermas, 1989).  Hallahan (1999c) reexamined implied third-party endorsement as an explanation of publicity's credibility and trustworthiness.  Instead of the traditional explanation that publicity's superiority can be attributed to an implied recommendation found in media content, he argued it was possible that audience members used biased processing that favored news and disfavors advertising.  Hallahan (1999a) suggested that audiences use the content class in which information appears as a contextual cue that biases the processing of mediated messages.  During the preattention phrases of processing messages, the audience members categorize messages into familiar content classes and invoke
different rules for processing, or cognitive schemas, that are deemed appropriate in a given situation. Under this scenario, the presentation of information in the form of news versus advertising (Anderson & Mayer, 1988) serves as a source cue when processing messages.  Then audience members use their knowledge about news and advertising when processing messages.  As a result, the effects commonly attributed to third-party endorsements by media can be explained in terms of biased processing.
On the other hand, there are arguments that suggest TPO endorsements might be very effective in communications (Dean & Biswas, 2001).  An endorsement is different from a recommendation.  To endorse a product is to express approval of publicly while to recommend is to present as worthy of acceptance or trial.  Endorsement involves an indication of approval, not necessarily a call to action (Hallahan, 1999c).  The positive effects of TPO endorsements could facilitate better positioning against competitors, create better persuasive information for product quality such as performance and reliability, and reduce consumer uncertainty and risk perception in a purchase situation (Dean & Biswas, 2001).  The increasing number of people accessing the Internet is fueling the increase of online sales and the most important economic factor on the Internet today, and in the years to come, is E-commerce.  This interactive commercialization has opened multiple channels of communication between adv
ertisers and consumers.  NUA Internet Surveys estimated that as of August 2001, 513.41 million people have used the Internet worldwide (URL: http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/).  Forrester Research (2001) estimated online retail is projected to reach more than $74 billion in 2002.  "Even though this amount could change due to the economic slowdown, eCommerce still won't shrink.  Conversely, if the current economic storm passes early, eCommerce will experience substantial growth in 2002" (URL: http:// www.forrester.com/ER/Press/Release/0,1769,651,00.html).  New communication technologies are creating new challenges for advertisers.  While the Internet represents new possibilities for advertisers, there is little information available regarding how to take advantage of the usage of TPO endorsements on the Internet.
A growing body of research and theory on the concept of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) may provide a valuable framework for advertisers as they try to adjust their business plans to the changing media environment.  Over the past decade, IMC has earned a significant status as both a philosophy and a method in the business (Shultz, 1995; 1993; Schultz et al., 1994; Duncan & Caywood, 1996).  IMC stands for "a strategic approach to planning all of a firm's communications by coordinating all of the promotional elements so that they work together" (Moscardelli, 1999, p.54).  In other words, IMC is to integrate several communications disciplines, such as public relations (PR) and advertising, to improve marketing communications programs.  While electronic transaction is expanding exponentially, there is a definite trend towards the direct need for IMC as an informational buffer between a company and consumers.  With the nature of information intensity, online shopping environm
ents provide more possibilities of integration of TPO endorsements.  A seal from BBB could ensure consumers that the Web store is trustworthy.  A customer testimonial might tell consumers about what other users think about the product while a news clip includes PR message that manages what reporters might be saying about the product.  Thus, seeing various TPO endorsements is extremely possible and could be an experience in which the consumer participates and is engaged in reviewing different types of TPO endorsements when evaluating a Web store.
McLeod, Pan, and Rucinski (1988) contend that consumers do not process messages from different news-like presentation and advertising-like presentation in the same way.  In their study, respondents were less likely to recall and later think and talk about ads they said they had seen, less likely to attempt to interpret their meaning and less likely to engage in the same form of selective scanning that the researchers had detected for news audiences.  Moreover, attention to ads was negatively related to recall of news content, leading the researchers to conclude that different people integrated information differently (McLeod et al., 1988).  Each TPO endorsement could follow a distinct set of conventions stating that different rules apply between the message producer and audience (Anderson & Meyer, 1988).  Contextual cues from different TPO endorsements might operate through a stimulus generation, where a stimulus affects the perception of the stimulus.  Thus, the intensity of persuasion might be different.  Hallahan (2000b) collected eleven studies that have reported experimental findings comparing the effectiveness of news versus that of advertising.  He found among the 11 studies, six studies produced only qualified support for claims about the superiority of news-like presentation, leadin
g this study to find out if consumers do process different types of TPO endorsements differently.  If news outperforms advertising as a result of implied third-party endorsements, valuable insights can be gleaned from examining the research conducted to date on the comparative effectiveness of the formats of various TPO endorsements for presenting promotional messages.
White and Ramana (1999) interviewed with Web decision-maker (WDM), people responsible for making Web site decisions for companies, and revealed that competition and the desire to establish an Internet presence were the driving forces for companies to develop a Web site.  However, the basic tenets of Web planning and evaluation are often ignored since companies simply do not know how to do it.  Findings in their study also indicated that Web site planning was done by trial and error, based on intuition, with little or no formal research.  In other words, in the absence of Web planning research, it is not surprising that much Web site creation is purely experimental.  Many WDMs realized they should be conducting more formalized research, but were uncertain how to go about it.  Most of them were tracking hits, looking at e-mail to get feedback from customers, and keeping an eye on the sites of their competitors.  They admitted they do not know whether their messages are effective.  M
any companies view Internet as a desirable medium for both advertising and PR practices.  A consumer's purchase intention toward a Web site indeed represents a triadic reciprocity where the intention may well be determined by the cognitive processing of contextual cues from both customer testimonials and news clips.  Consumers use the context in which the message is being presented as a cue as they shift between messages of varying content classes found in a Web site.  Thus, the purpose of the study is to shed some lights for Web message planning and to study if the presence of TPO endorsements can create better message delivery and persuasion.  Specifically, the research questions of the study are to study:
1.      how Internet consumers make up their minds about shopping at a Web site by using trust as an indicator of their evaluation process;
2.      how different TPO endorsements affect a consumer's trust;
3.      how the effects of the seal, customer testimonials, and the news clip are different on consumers' evaluation of a Web store;
What we learn from this study can be used to educate advertisers and focus the resources of integration of TPO endorsements.  The implications could contribute to the literatures as well as certain practical approaches to improve the integration of information for the continued growth of e-business.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES
Social cognitive theory suggests that behavior is best understood in terms of triadic reciprocity, where behavior, cognition and the environment exist in a reciprocal relationship, and thereby influence or are determined to a great extent by each other (Bandura, 1986).  A consumer's evaluation of a Web site indeed represents a triadic reciprocity where the intention may well be determined by the cognitive processing of contextual cues from different types of TPO endorsements.  An evaluation of information provided for a product or service at a Web store is a cognitive interaction between two parties under interest of selling and buying (Thagard, 1992).  One party, the seller, fosters in the consumers a representation of information, and therefore brings about a desired action, purchasing.  Thus, how consumers make purchase decisions online depends on how consumers evaluate information at a Web store as part of their overall purchase decisions.  A seal from Better Business Bureau (BBB), customer testimonials from third-party users using the product, and the news clip from the third-party publications reporting the product serve as three different types of TPO endorsements.  Trust could be generated through consumers' trustworthiness evaluation based on types of the third-party endorsement.  Trust is a state of perceiv
ed vulnerability, derived from a consumer's uncertainty regarding the prospective actions of others on whom they depend (Kramer, 1999; Downey & Cannon, 1997; Landon & Smith, 1997).  Trust plays a key role in the evaluation of a Web store (Crosby et al., 1990; Ganesan, 1994; Macintosh & Lockshin, 1997; McKnight et al., 1998).  Consumer trust is not developed through one single event, but through a dynamic process.  Trust is earned based on positive experiences over time or based on credible TPO endorsements.  Research indicates distrust can be successfully laid to rest by using credible sources that enhance the trustworthiness (Hallahan, 2000a; Cameron, 1994; Alcalay & Taplin, 1989; Schudson, 1984).  Companies who put their information on the Internet have the potential of being discovered by more journalists than before.  Once direct contact between the journalist and the companies establishes, the TPO endorsement can be established for consumers.  PR techniques such as getting cr
edible media reporting products and services can be used to enhance consumers' trust if applied appropriately, and that is why its function is so important in IMC strategy.  In short, the conceptual framework proposes that the purchase intention depends on the consumers' attitude toward the Web store.  This attitude is dependent on the evaluation of the TPO endorsements, dependent on trustworthiness of the TPO endorsements regarding a product or service (see FIGURE 1).
For example, the Blockbuster online rental service attracts the consumers with a free rental offer.  The visiting consumers might see a TPO endorsement that was linked to the review from Entertainment Weekly and decide to rent a certain movie because they believe Entertainment Weekly is trustworthy.  They may use the reviews from Entertainment Weekly to find out more movies they want to see and then return to the Blockbuster.  Because of the TPO endorsement, consumers' prepurchase evaluation of online Blockbuster store guides them to the ongoing search behavior and may constitute a movie rental eventually.
Online Shopping Decision Making: Attitude toward Shopping at the Web Store and Trust
The proposed model of how individuals make purchase decisions in information-intensive environments, such as online shopping, assumes that consumers evaluate a Web store as part of their overall purchase decisions.  The Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Azjen, 1975) proposes that the willingness to buy depends on the consumers' attitude toward shopping at the Web store.  Attitude is defined as either favorable or unfavorable in an evaluation of the site.  Trust is a state of perceived vulnerability that is derived from an individual's uncertainty regarding the motives, intentions, and the prospective actions of others on whom they depend (Kramer, 1999).  The proposed model hypothesizes that willingness to purchase from a Web store depends on the consumer's attitude toward shopping at the Web store (see also Figure 1).  Therefore:
H1:     Positive attitude toward shopping at the Web store would increase the purchase intention.
H2:     The consumer attitude toward shopping at the Web store is determined by trust.
Content Class: Differentiating TPO Endorsements
Hallahan (1999a) defined content class as "a classification variable for differentiating media content based on the perceived purpose of the communication" (p. 295).  Characteristics of different content classes are said to influence users' sense of information processing (Hallahan, 1999a; 1996; Cameron, 1994).  Audiences are believed to be open to a greater variety of messages presented as news since the perceived purpose of news is not to sell but tell.  Each TPO endorsement follows a distinct set of conventions stating that different rules apply between the message producer and audience (Anderson & Meyer, 1988).  It operates through a stimulus generation, where a stimulus affects the perception of the stimulus.  While different TPO endorsements can operate as different contextual source cues, they could deal with conditions that increase the probability of purchasing behavior since they can all serve as contextual cues to have positive influence on consumers.  Therefore:
H3:     When TPO endorsements are present, they will in general increase the purchase intention, compared to the condition where no TPO endorsement is available.
Context class can have two different effects on the perception of the persuasive communication (Hallahan, 1999).  The first is a memory-based evaluation in which consumers recall the source of a message when evaluating information.  The second is the online processing of individual content class that occurs as a consumer processes information on a Web site.  Trust could be generated by both the memory-based evaluation of information and believability of online processing of information through which consumers assess contextual cues from different content classes such as customer testimonials or news clips (Spreitzer & Mishra, 1999; Cameron, 1994).  In this case, it can be said that consumers use TPO endorsements in which the message is being presented as a cue as they shift between messages of varying TPO endorsements found on the Web site.  In this case, memory-based evaluation is an evaluation of what a consumer remembers in general.  Therefore:
H4:     Trust can be enhanced by positive memory-based evaluation of the TPO endorsements in general.
Message Source and Persuasion Effect
Message source is one of the most important factors that motivate processing.  Sources perceived as trustworthy and expert are more engaging and effective than those those do not feature these characteristics (Chaiken & Maheswaran, 1994).  As conceptualized by dual processing researchers, source credibility operates as a peripheral cue or heuristic when individuals are unmotivated to process message arguments effortfully or systematically.  Chaiken and Maheswaran (1994) suggested source effects actually could serve as arguments when an individual considers a proposition or can heighten levels of affect that predispose audiences to respond favorably.  Source credibility can be used to describe positive or negative characteristics of the communicator that influence the audience's acceptance of the message (Ohanian, 1990).  This term was adapted in this study as believability of the content class.  If TPO endorsements mean to foster consumer trust by increasing online processing of b
elievability of content class, which one is a better determinant of one's purchase intention?  In general, consumers believe news is real while advertising from a sponsor's persuasive intention is understood and dictates that consumers scrutinize the message (Hallahan, 1999a).  While several dimensions have been used as measure to define and study source credibility, claims about the superiority of news were posed and tested (Hallahan, 1999; Alcalay & Taplin, 1989; Schudson, 1984).  Theory also suggested that TPO endorsements were generally superior to celebrity endorsements.  Since customer is not really the celebrity, in terms of direct online processing of individual believability of the content class, two hypotheses are established:
H5a:    Positive believability of news clips is expected to increase consumer trust mostly;
H5b:    Negative believability of customer testimonials is expected to decrease consumer trust.
Context includes all aspects of an experiential environment presented concurrently with a stimulus that modulates the control exerted by other stimuli (Balsam, 1985).  Customer testimonials on a Web site can present an experiential environment with a contextual cue that modulates the control exerted by other stimuli, such as news clips.  Based on all above discussions, several hypotheses are established to test the content class effects on purchase intention:
H6:     Consumers who see the news clip will show the highest purchase intention.


METHODOLOGY
Several sections of laboratory experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses identified in the previous sections.  This section describes the sample, the experimental design, task, manipulations, and the constructs used to measure and test the hypotheses.
Subjects
Two hundred undergraduate students were used as the subjects. Subjects were volunteers recruited from marketing, education, advertising, and PR classes, taught at a large U.S. university.  As an incentive for their participation, the subjects received extra-credit points.  Since subjects were instructed to browse the site freely as they wished, they were not instructed to look for the manipulations, which best simulated real life.  In this case, 58 subjects who did not see the manipulations as they were supposed to or believed they saw what appeared to be nonexistent in their corresponding groups were dropped.  142 subjects' questionnaires eventually were used in this study, including 50 males (35.2%) and 92 females (64.8%).  All subjects were computer literate and familiar with Internet browsing.  85.2% reported browsing at least once a day.  89% had already bought at least one item online.
Task
The scenario and task used in the experiment have several properties that make it attractive in terms of experimental realism: the site is a real commercial Web store (URL: http://www.stikki.com) that agreed to collaborate in the study.  The site is small and does not enjoy a recognizable brand name.  All subjects began the experiment by answering some general questions about their attitudes toward online shopping.  The main task consisted of asking all subjects to assume that his or her male friend (Mike) has decided to buy a collectible doll for his girlfriend's birthday.  Browsing the Web, Mike has identified a commercial Web store (URL: http://www.stikki.com) that sells the collectible doll that his girlfriend wants (a $250 limited-edition Prince Doll).  The doll has the right characteristics and price, but he is not completely comfortable about purchasing it from an online site.  However, he identified three pieces of information that might help him make the decision.  They w
ere seal from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), few customer testimonials, and a news clip that was linked to a third-party publication that covered and reported an article about the store, www.stikki.com.  Therefore, he is asking the subject for a second opinion about these three pieces of information on the site.  The subjects accessed the Web site from computers in a familiar computer lab at the University.  They executed the task at their own pace.  After examining the site, the subjects were asked to close their browser window and to fill in the rest of the questionnaire.
Design and Manipulations
A planned-comparison experimental design was employed.  Subjects were first randomly assigned to one of two conditions in the two-group comparison (See Table 1).  Half of the subjects accessed a copy of the commercial site with the third-party endorsement manipulations, and the other half accessed a copy of the site without the manipulations.  In 4-group comparison, the first half of the subjects who accessed a copy of the commercial site with the third-party endorsement manipulations was further divided into 3 groups.  Three manipulations were customer testimonial only, news clip only, and seal only.  Endorsements from customers (owners received customers' feedback) as customer testimonials were created and prominently displayed for group 1.  Complimentary news clips from trade publication were displayed for Group 2.  The quotes were linked to the Web sites of the trade publication. Complimentary news clips from trade publication were displayed for Group 2.  For group 3, the seal was displayed and linked to the Web sites of the Better Business Bureau (BBB).
Measures
The questionnaire used here was closely based on previous research as previously mentioned.  Purchase intention (willingness to buy) was simply measured by a yes-no question.  Attitude towards shopping at the Web store was measured by asking the subjects whether it was likely that they would "recommend the purchase," "return to it", "tell another friend" or "consider it for a purchase" (four items).  Trust was measured by asking whether the subjects felt that the store was "trustworthy," "keeps its promises," "keeps customer best interest in mind," and "can be relied upon" (four items).  Memory-based evaluation of information was measured by asking subjects whether the overall information presented in the tested site were "accurate," "truthful," and "factual."  Believability of online processing of individual content class was measured by asking subjects whether news clips and testimonials were "convincing," "believable," and "impartial" (three items).  Control variables included
attitude toward online shopping in general, attitude toward the risk of the Web in general, and attitude toward the trust of Web stores in general (Grazioli & Jarvenpaa, 1999).  Bipolar, 7-point semantic differential scales were used to measure all trust, believability, and attitudinal measures ranging from 1 (low) to 7 (high) except the purchase intention.
RESULTS
Validity and Reliability of Measures
Before the hypothesis testing, reliability and validity of measures were assessed.  To assess the validity of measures, factor analysis with a Varimax rotation was conducted to verify that the items included in each construct loaded as expected without strong cross loading (Stevens, 1996).  The values of the constructs were computed as the mean of the ratings of the items associated with each construct.  No confounds were detected based on several demographic measures including gender, education level, how many time subjects browse Internet a week, and whether they have purchased something online.  Factor analyses were also conducted to verify that the items included in each construct of control variables, loaded as expected and without strong cross loading (see Table 3 and 4).
Willingness to Buy and Attitudes toward Shopping at the Web Store
It was hypothesized that the willingness to buy depends on the attitude toward shopping at the tested site (H1).  A test based on a logistic regression (#1) accepted H1 with p<0.000 (See Table 5).  The logistic model correctly predicted 82% of the observed behavioral variability.  No control variable was found significant.  To go further in detail, the main effects data in Table 6 provided no evidence that no any TOP endorsement was superior to each other in forming a subject's attitude toward shopping at the tested site.  However, seal exposure group was significantly higher than the control group in forming a subject's positive attitude toward shopping at the tested site.
Attitude toward Shopping at the Web Store and Trust
Regression (#2) tested whether positive attitude toward shopping at the tested site depends on trust (see Table 5).  The analysis concluded that trust increased positive attitudes toward shopping at the tested site (H2, p=0.000).  The standardized coefficient for trust was large and with the expected positive sign.  No control variable was found significant.  However, the main effects data in Table 6 provided evidence that a news clip and seal were the TPO endorsements that enhanced consumer trust mostly, demonstrating significant differences from the control group.  Again, an important finding here is that even though seal and news clips may not be superior to customer testimonials in terms of enhancing consumer attitude toward shopping at the particular Web store, a news clip and seal are indeed better determinants of enhancing consumer trust.
Willingness to Buy and TPO Endorsements
As measured by behavior (willingness to buy) in the 2-group comparison (see Table 7), most subjects who were exposed to at least one content class showed interest in buying (67%).  Only 40.5% of those subjects exposed to nothing showed interest in buying.  Apparently, there was a difference between these two groups (chi-square, p<=0.003).  Thus, H3 was supported since TPO endorsement increased purchase intention, compared to the condition where no TPO endorsements were available.
Memory-Based Evaluation of Information and Trust
Regression (#3) tested whether positive consumer trust depends on memory-based evaluation of content class (see Table 5).  The analysis concluded that trust was increased by positive memory-based evaluation of TPO endorsements in general (H4, p=0.000).  The standardized coefficient for trust was large and with the expected positive sign.  No control variable was found significant.  An interesting finding deserved mentioning in the main effects data in Table 6.  There was no evidence that any particular type of TPO endorsements would mostly enhanced the memory-based evaluation of information in general.  This finding was actually encouraging since it might reinforce the importance of studying different TPO endorsements individually as the following.
Believability of Individual TPO Endorsement on Trust
Regression (#4) tested how individual TPO endorsement influenced consumer trust (see Table 5).  The results showed that trust was increased by reliance on news clips (H5a, p=0.000) but decreased by reliance on negative customer testimonials (H5b, p=0.008).  H5a and H5b were supported since positive believability of news clips created more trust while negative believability of customer testimonials created a detrimental effect on consumer trust.  The results also showed that trust was not relied on believability of the seal but the seal itself.  Since the seal is a registered approval from BBB, there is no valence such as positive or negative believability involved.  That was why the dimension of believability from the seal did not influence the trust.
TPO Endorsement on Purchase Intention
In the four-group comparison (see Table 7), subjects exposed to news clips showed the highest percentage of buying (73.1%, p<0.05) and H6 was supported.  Subjects exposed to only customer testimonials (63%) and subjects exposed to the seal (66%) showed higher percentage of buying than subjects who saw nothing.
IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS & FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
Results presented here certainly validated previous research regarding the influence of consumer trust on purchase intention.  Moreover, it also showed important insights on the roles that different TPO endorsements play in the evaluation of a Web store.  Advertisers should carefully choose how to develop integrated presentation of information including different TPO endorsements to increase consumer trust and purchase intention.  The findings suggested it might not be true that regardless of types of the third-party endorsement, they all could provide positive persuasive communication in forming positive consumer trust.  However, it may be true as long as the Web store contained any type of third-party endorsements, the purchase intention would be higher than the same Web store (manipulated as control group) without any persuasive communication from any third-party endorsement.  However, it was the news clip that was mostly believed and then enhanced the trust while the seal most
ly enhanced the positive attitude toward the Web store.  This could suggest a Web planner should use the seal to ensure consumers that the site maintains the best business practice while using the news clip to let consumers learn the positive reviews from TPO regarding the promoted products on the site.  Remember that the regression analysis (#4) provided the evidence that a negative believability of customer testimonials decreased the consumer trust.  A question has been raised earlier that customer testimonials might be perceived as similar to advertising-like presentation.  The result might suggest this bold assumption may be true.  Apparently, the relations among believability, trust, and purchase intention regarding different types of TPO endorsements were not that simple and certainly did not have a one to one relationship, which presents several future directions for research studying more situational influences of trust and believability from third-party endorsements.
Although a news clip was shown to generate more trust, favorable believability of online processing, and purchase intention, it is encouraging that the seal and customer testimonials could have positive influences on purchase intention, too.  The findings definitely justified the need of IMC in overall Web communications for advertisers.  At its earliest application, IMC is the integration of all forms of communication program within a specific campaign, including advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and direct marketing (Schultz et al., 1993).  The premise is simple: a synergy can be achieved when all communications work in concert.  While consumers are exposed to consistent and complementary messages, those messages can reach the maximum points of contact and persuasion effect.  Today, IMC definitions are broader in application, as a brand is developed in consumers' minds as a result of all interactions they have with a company's Web site.  Schultz (1997) argued that
companies who know how to utilize the available information would gain a competitive advantage.  It is clear that any type of communication program should be conducted differently.  Learning where, in what form, under what conditions and what level consumers want to know will be important. The message will be what consumers want to hear, not what advertisers want to say.  This takes the concept much further than the simple challenge of combining and coordinating communication programs into something that achieves understanding how consumers perceive information from a company's Web site.
The first limitation of this study is that the subjects did not actually purchase from the store: they advised a hypothetical friend about purchasing it.  It is not clear whether conclusions reached by this study would apply to their own purchasing behavior.  It might be that individuals with more at stake (i.e., their own money) would work harder at evaluating the site.  The amount of time spent inspecting the site and the enthusiasm demonstrated by some of the subjects suggests however that this might not be a major threat to validity.  The study also ignored the affect components that are likely to be involved in the decision to buy.  The study did not compare different product classes.  Product classes could be a big factor that moderates the influence of different TPO endorsements.  For example, the different needs such as utilitarian need versus social need of a product could be elicited differently by different TPO endorsements.
Studies that include levels of involvement and consumer knowledge can test how the influence of news versus advertising was moderated by the degree of personal relevance and familiarity with the topic.  The ability, motivation, and opportunity (AMO) model in the consumer psychology literature also provides frameworks theoretically to address strategies for effective communication with consumers (MacInnis & Jaworski, 1989; Hallahan, 2000a).  Consumer knowledge can be defined as information that is learned, organized, represented, and stored in memory so it can be retrieved, used, and updated to create inherent, meaningful and useful property of the knowledge itself and make analogy, inference, reasoning and elaboration regarding product messages (Alba & Hutchinson, 1987; Hoch & Deighton, 1989).  "Subjective knowledge can be thought of as including an individual's degree of confidence in his/her knowledge, while objective knowledge refers only to what an individual actually knows" (Brucks, 1985, p. 2).  The knowledge that consumers possess and the way it is organized lies at the heart of the understanding of consumer cognition.  An understanding of what consumers know about products underpins what marketers and scholars of consumer behavior know about the processes, such as product preferences, attitudes toward brands, and purchase decisions.
MacInnis, Moorman, and Jaworski (1991) suggested in-depth processing is desirable for two reasons: first, attention is likely to be modest as a result of too much information and distractions in the typical communication setting.  Second, enhancing levels of processing evokes more enduring memory and attitude change.  While objective knowledge facilitated information acquisition through effective deliberation of using newly acquired knowledge, subject knowledge increased the reliance on what consumers believe they know to search and process information.  Brucks (1985) and Gardner (1983) both agreed that subjective knowledge differs from objective knowledge when consumers are-over or-under confident about their actual knowledge level.  Since subjective knowledge is not the actual knowledge, it is not likely to facilitate efficiency in distinguishing variability of product attributes search and influence the ability to formulate the benefit/cost ratio of acquiring information (Bruck
s, 1985).  Brucks (1985) found that inverted U shaped relationship between subjective knowledge and total amount of search did not exist.  In this case, self-accessed knowledge may be more likely to be efficient in relying on one's own evaluation skills and, in a result, affect the acceptance of different message claims about a product.  Consumers who consider themselves unfamiliar with buying a tennis racquet may be negatively affected by prominence of inconsistent message claim.  They may find confusing when exposing to inconsistency message claims.  In contrast, consumers who have higher confidence in their subjective knowledge may find it easy to integrate inconsistent message claims across content types.  Even though they could miscomprehend the message claims, they are more likely to process them and make use of them to make a decision.  These issues are all important in future research regarding the effects of different TPO endorsements on evaluation of an online store and
purchase decision.
CONCLUSIONS
This study has validated the effects of TPO endorsements by employing a sample that better approximates the wider population of Internet consumers.  In addition, this study contributes to the ongoing studies on trust and online purchasing by examining three types of TPO endorsements.  The picture of e-business and Internet consumers that emerges from the study suggests that many consumers are searching for effective strategies to transact in a virtual world.  They cope with advertisers' persuasive strategies, sufficiently discount negative believability of customer testimonials in the presence of trust, and are able to evaluate trust-building mechanism that they identify on a Web site such as a news clip and a seal.  At the beginning of this paper, it was stated that this study has been motivated by the question of examining two content classes, advertising and news, commonly employed but not integrated enough in real business.  The results warrant that consumers are in fact not i
ndiscriminant toward news clips, seal, and customer testimonials.  At the same time, it seems that progress is possible if advertisers could find ways to persuade consumers better by integrating and improve all possible TPO endorsements.  Consumers look at them.  However, they may not believe customer testimonials for what they are, due to being discriminant to the approaches of the persuasion.  Alternatively, they search for more assurance from news clips or seal to draw conclusion on their trust and attitude toward the Web store.
The Internet provides the technology to tailor shopping experience to the needs of the consumer.  Advertising and PR specialists are involved in the flow of online information where their consumers are looking for information.  With the nature of information intensity, online shopping environments provide more possibilities of integration of content class.  Today businesses find it necessary to concentrate on building long-lasting relationships with its consumers.  The ability for two-way communication in IMC strategy and the near instantaneous nature of the Web make the Internet the medium of choice for relationship marketing.  While Internet will continue to annihilate the concept of marketing to a mass audience and intensify niche marketing (White & Ramana, 1999), it is interesting to study how consumers process information differently or altogether from different content classes. Through carefully designed and coordinated programmatic studies, researches can help better unders
tand how advertising and PR messages generate a consumer's perception of a product or a service and impose the image of a Web store.  Researches can also help better understand how antecedents and consequences of processing can provide the basis for effective persuasion.
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TABLE 1: PLANNED COMPARIOSN DESIGN
2-Group Comparison
Group 1
Group 2
Manipulations
Third-Party Endorsements
Control Group
Number of Subject
100/150
42 /50
4-Group Comparison
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4
Manipulations
Customer Testimonials
News Clip
Seal
Control Group
Subjects (used/participated)
27/50
26/50
47/50
42/45
*200 students participated and 142 observations were used for data analysis
TABLE 2: SUMMARY OF DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS OF THE MAIN CONSTRUCT
Construct
Mean
(1-7 range)
Standard
Deviation
Reliability
(Cronbach's alpha)
Dependent Variable
Attitude toward shopping at the Web store
3.227
1.59
0.86
Trust
4.21
1.62
0.96
Believability of the news clip
4.03
1.55
0.91
Believability of customer testimonials
4
1.71
0.96
Believability of the seal
5.18
1.66
0.94
Memory-based evaluation of information
4.74
1.58
0.96
Control Variables
Attitude toward online Shopping
5.3
1.2
0.85
Attitude to trust Web stores
3.52
1.26
0.86
Attitude toward the general Web
4.02
1.16
0.74
TABLE 3: CONTROL VARIABLES - FACTOR SELECTION
#
Factor
Eigenvalue
Percentage
1
Attitude toward online shopping
3.954
43.94
2
Attitude toward the trust of Web stores
1.741
19.35
3
Attitude toward the risk of Web
1.211
13.45
TABLE 4: CONTROL VARIABLES - FACTOR ROTATION AND LOADINGS
Factors
Question
Attitude toward online shopping
Attitude toward the risk of Web
Attitude toward the trust of Web stores
I like the idea of shopping online.
.84
Shopping online is a good idea.
.80
The idea of shopping online is appealing.
.84
Buying from Internet sites that do not have a physical store may cause more problems than buying from sites that do have a physical store.
.85
Buying from a Web-only store is more risky than buying from a Web store that has a physical counterpart.
.76
Buying on the WWW is risky.
.82
Most Internet sites tell the truth about their abilities and experiences.
.85
Most Internet sites can be counted on to do what they say they will do.
.74
Most sites are honest in describing their customers' experiences.
.89




TABLE 5: REGREESION RESULTS
Regression 1 (logistic)
Hypothesis H1: Accepted
Dependent Variable: Purchase intention
Intercept
*
Attitude toward shopping at the Web store
***

Regression 2
Hypothesis H2: Accepted
Dependent Variable: Attitude toward shopping at the Web store.
Adj. R2 = 0.50
Intercept
n.s.
Trust
0.69 ***

Regression 3
Hypothesis H4: Accepted
Dependent Variable: Trust.
 Adj. R2 = 0.76
Intercept
 n.s.
Memory-based evaluation
 0.82 ***
Regression 4
Hypothesis H5a: Accepted
Hypothesis H5b: Accepted

Dependent Variable: Trust
Adj. R2 = 0.72
Intercept
**
News clip believability
1.159 ***
Customer testimonial believability
-0.393 **
Seal believability
-0.22 n.s.

NOTES.
1 - Values represent standardized regression coefficients.  Asterisks represent significance levels:  *** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; n.s. = non significant
2 - The first set of data refers to a logistic regression.  All others to linear regressions.  Logistic regression does not have an Adj. R2 or standardized regression coefficients readily comparable to the linear regression coefficients.

TABLE 6: MAIN EFFECTS OF CONTENT CLASS
Post Hoc Comparisons  (Mean Differences)
Measures
Individual ANOVA Test
Third-Party Endorsements
Control
Group
Seal
News Clip
Customer Testimonials
M
SD
M
SD
M
SD
M
SD
Attitude toward the Web store
2.899 *
2.64b
1.3
3.51a *
1.59
3.39
1.62
3.51
1.79
Trust
4.183 **
3.51 b
1.19
4.59a *
1.63
4.59 a *
1.78
4.29
1.77
Memory-based evaluation
1.381 n.s.
4.36
1.17
4.99
1.6
4.95
1.91
4.72
1.74
Note. Means that do not share a common subscript significantly differ.  * p < .05 or ** p < .01
TABLE 7: PURCHASE INTENTION IN PLANNED-COMPARISON GROUPS
2-Group Comparison
Group 1
(Third-Party Endorsement)
Group 2
(Control Group)
Willingness to buy
67/100 (67%)
17/42 (40.5%)
4-Group Comparison
Group 1
Customer Testimonials
Group 2 a*
News Clip Only
Group 3 Seal
Group 4 b
Control Group
Willingness to buy
17/27 (63%)
19/26 (73.1%)
31/47 (66%)
17/42 (40.5%)
Note.  Chi-square result for 2 groups, chi-square test=8.612, d.f. =1, p<=0.003,
Chi-square Result for 4 groups, chi-square test=9.213, d.f. =3, p<=0.027,
Percentages that do not share a common subscript significantly differ,
* p < .05 or ** p < .01.
 FIGURE 1: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK











TPO Endorsement

H5a