Abstract—Increasingly more people access virtual online markets in order to buy and sell products, establish relationships and give way to forms of social commerce. In these contexts, it appears necessary to have a clear indication on the way in which products should be presented in order to generate a sense of trust and therefore encourage the purchase to be made. Thirty-five subjects were involved in this study which were then required to evaluate simulated webpages for the online sales of different products. The results indicate that the webpages that appeared richer in content from an informative perspective, and above all the ones that exhibited an image of a subject using a product, were the most preferred. However, this preference did not have an impact either on the opinions relating to the quality of the product, the reliability of the site or the seller, or on the subjective value of the purchasable item. From a qualitative analysis, it emerged that these aspects would more likely be influenced by the relational opportunities that could be provided by the site.

Index Terms—information richness, quality, social commerce, trust

Cite: Oronzo Parlangeli, Martina Cesaroni, Giacomo Giuliani and Isla Elieli, "Social Commerce: Informative Richness and Perceived Quality of Products" Journal of Advanced Management Science, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 279-284, July 2017. doi: 10.18178/joams.5.4.279-284