How digital tools alter consumer trust and purchasing decisions

This is according to researchers from Florida State University in the US, who argue that consumers who rely on blog posts, online reviews, testimonials and other user-generated content to inform their purchase decisions require digital platforms that minimise suspicion of missing or misrepresented content.

“The availability of certain features, including photo filters or the ability to delete content once you’ve posted it, dramatically impacts whether user-generated content affects brand performance,” says Colleen Harmeling, an Associate Professor of Marketing at the university.

“Those features don’t even have to be used to affect product performance. The mere presence of such features in a digital space affects consumer trust in that content for their purchase decision.”

Harmeling’s study, in association with Florida State colleague Taylor Perko and Rachel Hochstein, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, appears in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

The authors say their findings reinforce the notion that digital platforms “serve as custodians of trust in modern society”.

Harmeling calls it “a very significant study” that “I think has profound implications for how and what we trust as consumers, for how marketers engage with their consumers, and how to increase the trustworthiness of the information that’s being circulated about the brand”.

The results of the study showcase how those features influenced trust, distrust and purchasing decisions.

How online trust can be eroded

“We found that trust can be violated if people believe that their digitally presented content isn’t what unfolds in reality – that’s where the photo filters come into play – or if there is missing data from their observable example,” Harmeling explains.

“If we suspect missing data, then we start to call into question whether the online user’s experience with a product is reflective of the population.”

The researchers believe their findings also have implications for social media influencers, who might want to avoid using photo filters or overly edited photos and videos. “Focusing instead on live videos or real-time ‘story’ posts may be perceived as more trustworthy.”

Perhaps more importantly, the researchers urge marketers to help consumers distinguish ‘real’ from ‘fake’ and ‘missing’ content from ‘complete’ content’.

They emphasise that such judgments “require the ability to identify patterns in a body of user-generated content, recognise anomalies in the pattern and estimate the impact of truth-altering features on each online platform”.

The research team adds: “Helping consumers make these judgments should be a priority of marketers, because suspicion of even single posts can erode trust in the entire body of user-generated content and sow uncertainty in consumers’ purchase decisions.”

Harmeling also points out policy implications, especially amid the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence.

For example, the European Union’s AI Act, scheduled to take effect this year, will require labelling deepfake AI-generated photos, videos or audio of existing people and places as artificially manipulated.

You can find out more about the study here.