ChangHyun Jin: e-mail: chjin@mail.utexas.edu |UT: At Austin: http://www.utexas.edu | Ciadvertising: Jiad: http://www.ciadvertising.org

4-1.Electronic Commerce Transactions

As alluded to earlier, the Internet is also likely to influence commercial activities. This ranges over the whole process of transaction including searching for information, ordering or exchanging goods and services, and paying for them. More importantly, the Internet exerts a powerful impact on the communication or distribution channels through which those activities occur (Stewart et al, 1996). From this perspective, what is meant by electronic commerce transactions is the behavior of users' wwhile obtaining information, purchasing or exchanging consumer goods, or both, using computer networks such as the Internet. This includes the user's use of Internet ranging from simply gathering information about items for shopping or buying them to selling a personal one. Since the emergence of person-to-person auction sites such as the Ebay, the act of an individual's selling one's own item is becoming an important online transaction.

4-2.Credibility in E-Commerce Transactions

The idea that consumer's behavior of buying or selling a commodity on the Internet is in the process of persuasion and credibility is an integral part of persuasion. The propensity to buy or sell products and services has as much to do with the purchaser's feelings about who or what is selling the product as with price, quality, and accessibility. How consumer feels i.e., credibility is important especially in electronic commerce (Leebaert, 1999). In order to buy a commodity, consumers have to provide their personal information including credit card numbers through the Web but generally, tend to show extreme hesitance or reluctance when asked for such information online. This may be due to people's distrust about the Web site. Once users perceive a web site lacks credibility, they are likely to stop buying or selling something and a site with high credibility vice versa.

For example, according to a recent survey on online shopping in the U.S.A, more than half of people surveyed did not buy primarily because they dose not trust online security (quoted in Catalog Age magazine, 1999). Another survey by Jupiter Communications found that 63 percent of Web users answered that they never trust a web site with regard to privacy in spite of efforts to address troubles related to privacy (quoted in COMPUTERWORLD, 1999). Furthermore, Kollock (1999) analyzed that an institutionalized credibility system is the reason for which online auction sites, which are the largest or have been rated for their offerings, succeed. In theory, it might be summarized that theincrease in Web credibility would produce an increase in online transaction.

While credibility is extremely relevant to all components - source, message, channel, and receiver - of the communication model, early scholars in the communication field have long paid special attention to source credibility. In relation to new media, attention needs to shift away from source credibility to media credibility. A medium's certain character can have a significant effect on people's attitude change or behavioral orientation.