Society & Culture - Posted by A'ndrea Elyse Messer-Penn State on Friday, November 5, 2010 13:18 - 7 Comments 
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"In general, the attribution of specialization can increase the credibility of a product or any kind of object," S. Shyam Sundar says. "It's really how the human psyche works." (Credit: iStockphoto)
PENN STATE (US) — A new study suggests online consumers judge a site’s or a software’s credibility by its name—and the more specialized the better.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
In an experiment, participants said they trusted websites, recommendation-providing software, and even computers labeled to perform specific functions more than the same Internet tools with general designations, says S. Shyam Sundar, a communications professor at Penn State.
“In general, the attribution of specialization can increase the credibility of a product or any kind of object,” Sundar says. “It’s really how the human psyche works.”
Researchers randomly assigned a group of 124 undergraduate students to buy wine with websites, recommendation agents, and computer monitors that were labeled either as specialized wine purchasing-technologies or as general e-commerce technologies.
The specialized tools differed from their generalized counterparts only in the way they were labeled and in specific on-screen cues during the experiment, says Sundar, who worked with Yoon Jeon Koh, director of market intelligence, Economics and Management Research Lab, KT Corp., Republic of Korea.
For instance, the search engine providing product recommendations was labeled “wine agent,” while the general recommendation agent was named “E Agent.”
Participants who answered a questionnaire following the experiment reported that they trusted the specialized technology significantly more than they trusted general websites, recommendation agents, and computers.
Credibility appears to increase when participants used more than one specialized tool—or layer—at the same time for the wine-buying task. For example, Sundar says that the participants trusted a website more if it features a specialized recommendation agent.
“It’s a cumulative interaction,” says Sundar. “When at least two out of the three layers of online sources were labeled specialist, there was an increase in the trust and credibility among the users.”
The researchers report their findings in the December issue of the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.
Sundar suggests that mental shortcuts—called heuristics—could explain why users attribute expertise to specifically-labeled e-commerce tools. People often rely on these shortcuts when they make decisions on media sources.
“Basically, cognitive heuristics are mental shortcuts that we use to make judgments that lead to decisions,” Sundar says. “For example, we see a long essay, we immediately think that it is a strong essay. This is the ‘length equals strength’ heuristic. Similarly, we tend to quickly believe statements made by experts or specialists because we apply the ‘expertise heuristic,’ which says that experts’ statements can be trusted.”
Researchers also tracked the time that users spent making purchases. While researchers expected that multiple layers of specialization would speed up decision-making time, the results revealed that users spent less time when there was a contrast between the source layers.
For example, the quickest decisions were made by participants who used a specialized website on a general computer.
These results seem counter to product development trends in the e-commerce industry. More companies are developing multi-purpose technology to suit a range of functions.
“Lately, in the industry, a lot of effort is being directed to produce convergence, creating devices that are trying to do everything for everyone,” says Sundar. “For example, cell phones are promoted as doing so many things—from making calls to navigating the web.”
E-commerce developers may also find that customers trust transactions and recommendations made on specialized websites and by recommendation agents, rather than multi-purpose portals.
Sundar says the experiment is rooted in earlier research on television networks and channels that specialize in certain content areas. In a 1996 experiment, participants said that entertainment clips on TV sets designated as entertainment televisions were more entertaining. Likewise, viewers said that news footage on “news television sets” was more newsworthy.
The research was supported by KT Corp. and the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation.
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7 Comments
Its not a question of generality vs specificity alone. There are several other factors to be taken into consideration.
Its also about name recognition, existence of trust based on prior goodwill with the recommending agent, and prior experience.
a) Recognition. Assume the deal is between a hitherto unknown, ‘wine recommendation agent’ vs. an ‘Martha Stewart’s (or some other famous chef’s) fine food recommendation agent’. Even though the chef is not directly specialized in wine, 50% of people will likely choose the chef’s recommendation, because though it may be labeled as specialized, it is still new and not tested or popular yet.
b) Trust. People will trust what they have been trusting all along, even if it is more generic and not specialized. ‘Wine recommendation agent from hitherto-unknown-guy’ vs. ‘Recommendations by Rachel Ray – food network queen’. Results will split more evenly even though ‘food network’ is more generic.
c) Prior experience. A wine recommendation agent that didnt stand up to snuff when a consumer used it before, will stand little chance when confronted with something like ‘Recommendations from foodies around the world’ if a consumer had good prior experience using the foodies’ recommendations. ‘Recommendations from foodies with good-track-record’ is more trustworthy than ‘wine recommendation from a website with bad-track-record’ even though foodies is more generic and not specific.
So, base not your findings only on labeled specificity vs generality.
Successful branding confers trust: rightly or wrongly. I think trust has lots to do with this phenomenon.
The consumer’s knowledge of the subject must also be considered. If you are a person who knows wine in general you have an advantage over the non-drinker who is looking for something for some friends. This was a problem with a survey where it was thought people used brands that had a persons’ name in the title until they discovered over half the people thought “Sears” was a generic term.
Labels that make or appear to make promises are automatically trusted more than those that don’t.
It is quite common for people to buy multiple tools that do the same job. As a simple example, look in your kitchen… how many different knives do you have for specialised tasks? If you lay them all out and logically look at it, how many different types do you actually need?
We assume that something that is specialised is better, so therefore if something sounds specialised, we will probably lean toward using that one.
pat a thomas
As Mohan Arun L. said, “Its not a question of generality vs specificity alone. There are several other factors to be taken into consideration.”
Besides ones previously mentioned, there would seem to be a “filtering” aspect that was not considered. When people look for information to help them make a decision, they do not want to start at base beginning and work their way to the information they want. They, also however, do not want to begin at the final levels because they might miss relevant information at other levels. In other words, people would rather start in a middle layer avoiding useless background, but having a range of information available to narrow what is relevant.
The observation “that users spent less time when there was a contrast between the source layers” is an aspect of the study that seems not to have been adequately examined. The decision maker is avoiding a claustrophobic box of imposed limitations created by similar source layers, and is creating a loosely structured zone of comfort provided by contrasting source layers. The comfort comes from not being hemmed in by a narrow decision-making environment, but having one bounded by manageable, understandable criteria.
Mohan Arun L. is right on another count. Finding the right wording is not easy. I know what I am thiking, but telling you precisely what that is…? And, that goes back to my eternal skepticism of extreme Sapir-Whorf. One can have thoughts without words.
The sample has skewed the results. If you assigned a task of buying wine and the only two options available where wine recommendations and ecommerce recommendations, people will choose wine recommendations. If there had been multiple levels of specialization available, like ‘liquor recommendations’ and ‘food and beverage recommendations’ and ‘wine recommendations’ was not available as an option, the results will be different. I am not sure how to put it down in words. Wine is ‘too specific’ and cannot be compared on the same level with ‘ecommerce’ because ecommerce is too generic. They should have compared something like ‘liquor recommendations’ vs ‘fine food and beverage recommendations’ and the results will split almost equally.