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The paper aims to examine ways to reduce privacy risk and its effects so that adoption of e‐services can be enhanced.

Consumers that form a viable target market for an e‐service are presented with the task of experiencing the e‐service and expressing their attitudes and intentions toward it. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the responses.

The paper finds that consumer beliefs that the e‐service will be easy to use and that the e‐service provider is credible and capable reduce privacy risk and its effects, thus enhancing adoption likelihood.

The focus on a financial services product (online bill paying) suggests that similar research should be conducted with other high‐risk e‐services (such as those dealing with healthcare) and lower‐risk e‐services (such as subscription services and social networks).

In addition to addressing consumers' privacy risk directly, e‐service providers can also reduce privacy risk and its effects by enhancing corporate credibility and perceived ease of use of the service. Increased assessments of privacy risk perceptions and efforts to reduce those perceptions will likely yield higher usage rates for e‐services.

The use of the technology acceptance model from information systems research, combined with a multi‐faceted conceptualization of privacy risk, moves the examination of privacy risk to a higher level, particularly in light of the examination of the additional factors of perceived ease of use and corporate credibility.

Of the many approaches to building a brand’s image on the Internet, a Web site is one of the most important tools for managers. An important decision made by Web site managers is whether to place banner advertisements on their brand’s Web site (e.g. The New Yorker Web site placing an ad for polo.com). While banner advertisements are widespread in the marketplace, it is unclear whether Web sites containing such advertisements may be harming themselves by such a practice. This study addresses this issue by investigating the impact of banner advertisement and Web site congruity on consumer attitudes toward a brand’s Web site. The results of an experiment indicate that if managers include such advertisements on their Web site, these advertisements should be consistent with the Web site brand and that certain consumer characteristics should be considered. Implications of the research for brand management and advertising on the Internet are provided.

The projected sales potential for Internet commerce indicates that businesses must understand those consumer characteristics that will influence consumer adoption of this medium for shopping. An empirical study conducted here (n = 403) investigates the extent to which open‐processing (more general innovativeness) and domain‐specific innovativeness explain the conditions under which consumers move from general Internet usage to a product purchase via the Internet. The results of our study find that generally higher amounts of Internet use (for non‐shopping activities) are associated with an increased amount of Internet product purchases. Importantly, however, this relationship is moderated by domain‐specific but not general innovativeness. Implications for business practice and academic research are provided.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

The purpose of this paper is to identify trust‐building signals and signaling patterns of commercial and non‐commercial wine bloggers within a trustworthiness framework and assess prominence of balanced versus unbalanced resource‐based or compensatory approaches for the management of consumer trust beliefs and the facilitation of positive trust intentions.

Development and validation of theory‐based signal‐classification scheme and two‐stage content analysis of trust‐building signals embedded in wine blogs.

It is found that wine bloggers manage consumer trust beliefs using an unbalanced signaling approach emphasizing ability over character. Ability sub‐dimension signals vary by commercial orientation. Also, character signaling varies with commercial orientation.

Only English‐language wine blogs were studied. Limitations of content analysis procedures preclude direct evaluation of signal efficacy in absolute or contextualized terms.

Bloggers must secure reader trustworthiness to be effective communicators. Readers are likely to possess latent concerns about the bias of commercial bloggers and abilities of non‐commercial ones. Bloggers recognize the importance of ability signaling but may not be fully exploiting their positions of perceived advantage nor fully compensating for their distinctive inherent perceived weaknesses.

Trustworthiness signaling in wine blogs has implications for bloggers in other contexts, including consumer and non‐consumer information environments and not‐for‐profit and governmental communicators. Blog and blogger trustworthiness must be addressed by these communicators to effect audience persuasion.

The paper discusses deductive development and validation of a novel signal classification scheme applied to trust building by bloggers that, through analysis of signal content, sheds light on behavior of commercial and non‐commercial information sources in emerging product information environments.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct and interaction effects of brand name (BN) of wine and country‐of‐origin (COO) on perceptions of the personality image of the wine, expected price, and willingness to engage with the wine.

A field experiment in which label information for a fictitious wine was presented to wine consumers with a questionnaire on wine perceptions and response measures. The label information was manipulated across subjects using four BNs and three COOs.

The study confirms BN and COO effects on perceived wine personality and responses to the wine. Findings also indicate the effects of BN and COO as well as a BN‐COO interaction effect on price expectations.

Findings link different personality dimensions to the two different cues, suggesting greater independence of the cues than originally expected. However, some BN‐COO incongruity effects are found particularly regarding price perceptions. A small set of wine BNs and COOs are tested and sample size/treatments are limited. With larger sample sizes, some weak effects might prove more significant. For more substantive support of these findings, the study could be repeated in different locations with different BN and COO examples.

The results suggest consumers are open to some fluidity in brand name use across wine‐producing countries with appropriate pricing strategies. They also highlight the importance of understanding consumer perceptions of wine personality in assessing consumer responses and price expectations.

The research addresses BN and COO direct and interaction effects on many aspects of wine evaluation and the central role of personality dimensions in wine assessments. The paper provides evidence of value in a rapidly evolving marketplace for wine and insights into the ongoing strategic changes in the wine market. It also contributes to theory and research on information cue use and cue incongruity effects.

The blogosphere is an active arena for the communication of topic‐area claims by marketer and non‐marketer sources. Determinants of influence in the blogosphere have not been well documented. The purpose of this paper is to investigate trust in bloggers, in a framework involving characteristics of bloggers and blogs and blog reading outcomes.

Blog‐reader perceptions of bloggers and blogs are derived and tested on a sample of blog readers for their effects on trust formation. Tests of mediation examine the role of perceived personal outcomes of blog reading in trust‐formation processes.

Trust formation is predicted by engagement knowledge of the blogger, unique reading experiences, and belief that the blog improved the marketspace. Blogger authoritative knowledge negatively impacted trust intentions. Positive experiences from blog reading mediate relationships between blog and blogger characteristics and intentions to trust.

Blog readers examined in this initial investigation may not be totally representative of the general population of blog readers. Replications with other populations are needed.

The paper's findings suggest knowledge is an essential characteristic of a trustworthy blogger, but knowledge unrelated to everyday information needs holds little perceived value for readers. Firms operating blogs may wish to de‐emphasize their topic‐area authoritative knowledge and project a voice of topic‐area engagement.

The paper identifies salient trust‐related blogger and blog characteristics and provides an indication of a domain‐specific trust‐development process that is applicable to marketer and non‐marketer information sources.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a longitudinal country‐people image effect model involving a significant negative international incident between countries; study how such a model changes over time; and study the extent of image recovery in terms of how the offending country, people, and its products are perceived.

Australian consumers were surveyed before, during, and a decade after the French nuclear testing in the Pacific in 1995. Model testing was conducted using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques.

The model was strongly supported in all three‐time points. During the crisis, negative feelings toward France/French rose and consumers' response to French products dropped. Country‐people competency has risen over country‐people character in explaining product evaluations. In the final period, the Australian views on country‐people character and product response had more than recovered. The country‐people character beliefs now play a significant role in influencing product evaluations after the crisis than before, while the impacts of country‐people competency on product evaluation and response have diminished dramatically. Product evaluation is fairly stable over time.

Studies to date have focused on country image at a point in time in relatively stable environmental conditions. The proposed model is helpful in understanding the processes of country‐product image effects through the study of all attitude components and through differentiation of beliefs about country and people production‐related and non‐production related characteristics. The cross‐temporal validation of the model indicates its usefulness for general applicability in country image effects research.