Acta Univ. Agric. Silvic. Mendelianae Brun. 2019, 67(6), 1577-1585 | DOI: 10.11118/actaun201967061577
Assessing Web Surface Credibility by Generation Y: A Q Methodological Study
- Department of Marketing and Trade, Faculty of Business and Economics, Mendel University in Brno, Zemědělská 1, 613 00 Brno, Czech Republic
Online marketing includes a variety of activities. Website presentation is one of the most striking. For many business providers it is vital to have a web-site and therefore there are currently more than 1.8 billion websites on the Internet. This situation has an impact on people who access the sites in terms of problems of decision making and confidence in the credibility of the website. This article deals with so-called surface credibility and analyses research data using the Q-method. The research was conducted with 70 respondents from generation Y. 40 anonymized web pages were used as sorted variables. The web pages were divided into 8 categories: financial institutions, universities, educational institutions, travel, lifestyle, commodity search engines, e-shops, health. Four factors were extracted and described. According to our study, the design quality; previous experience and similarity; graphical elements, website layouts and institutional framework are main elements playing the key role when assessing web surface credibility by generation Y. The main contribution of this article lays in its methodological approach by using Q-method in the innovative context of analysing web sites.
Keywords: web credibility, Q methodology, marketing communication
Grants and funding:
This paper was supported by the project CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_017/0002334 Research Infrastructure for Young Scientists, co-financed by Operational Programme Research, Development and Education.
Received: June 3, 2019; Accepted: September 20, 2019; Published: December 22, 2019 Show citation
References
- JEON, G. Y. J. and RIEH, S. Y. 2014. Answers from the Crowd: How Credible are Strangers in Social Q&A? In: iConference 2014 Proceedings. iSchools, pp. 663-668.
- BAKER, R. M. 2006. Economic rationality and health and lifestyle choices for people with diabetes. Social Science & Medicine, 63(9): 2340-2353. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2006.06.007
Go to original source...
- BARRY, J. and PROOPS, J. L. 2000. Citizenship, sustainability and environmental research: Q methodology and local exchange trading systems. Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar.
Go to original source...
- BART, Y., SHANKAR, V., SULTAN, F. and URBAN, G. L. 2005. Are the drivers and role of online trust the same for all web sites and consumers? A large-scale exploratory empirical study. Journal of Marketing, 69(4): 133-152. DOI: 10.1509/jmkg.2005.69.4.133
Go to original source...
- BELK, R. W. (Ed.). 2010. Research in Consumer Behaviour. 1st Edition. Bradford: Emerald Group Pub.
- BROWN, S. R. 1993. A primer on Q methodology. Operant Subjectivity, 16(3/4): 91-138.
Go to original source...
- BROWN, S. R. 1996. Q Methodology and Qualitative Research. Qualitative Health Research, 6(4): 561-567. DOI: 10.1177/104973239600600408
Go to original source...
- BROWN, S. R. 2008. Q Methodology. In: GIVEN. L. M. (Ed.). The Sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
- CARTER, R. F. and GREENBERG, B. S. 1965. Newspapers or Television: Which Do You Believe? Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 42(1): 29-34.
Go to original source...
- COMMITTEE ON INTERNAL MARKET AND CONSUMER PROTECTION. 2011. Consumer behaviour in a digital environment. Report. Brussels: European Parliament.
- DEWAR, K., LI, W. M. and DAVIS, C. H. 2007. Photographic Images, Culture, and Perception in Tourism Advertising, Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 22: 2, 35-44. DOI: 10.1300/J073v22n02_03
Go to original source...
- FOGG, B. J. and TSENG, H. 1999. The elements of computer credibility. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems the CHI is the limit - CHI '99. New York, NY: ACM Press, pp. 80-87.
Go to original source...
- FOGG, B. J., SWANI, P., TREINEN, M. et al. 2001. What makes Web sites credible? In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '01. New York, NY: ACM Press, pp. 61-68.
Go to original source...
- FOGG, B. J., SOOHOO, C., DANIELSON, D. R., MARABLE, L., STANFORD, J. and TAUBER, E. R. 2003a. How do users evaluate the credibility of Web sites? In: Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Designing for user experiences - DUX '03. New York, NY: ACM Press.
Go to original source...
- FOGG, B. J. 2003b. Persuasive technology: using computers to change what we think and do. Boston: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
Go to original source...
- GOLDMAN, I. 1999. Q Methodology As Process and Context in interpretivism, Communication, and Psychoanalytic. Psychological Record, 49(4): 589-604. DOI: 10.1007/BF03395329
Go to original source...
- HOVLAND, C. I., JANIS, I. L. and KELLEY, H. H. 1953. Communication and persuasion: psychological studies of opinion change. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
- I4S. 2011. Q Methodology: A method for modern research. [Online]. 2011. Available at: http://qmethod.org/ [Accessed: 2019, October 15].
- LANKES, R. D. 2008. Credibility on the internet: shifting from authority to reliability. Journal of Documentation, 64(5): 667-686. DOI: 10.1108/00220410810899709
Go to original source...
- LAZAR, J., MEISELWITZ, G. and FENG, J. 2007. Understanding Web Credibility: A Synthesis of the Research Literature. Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction, 1(2): 139-202. DOI: 10.1561/1100000007
Go to original source...
- LIU, C. 2007. Modeling consumer adoption of the Internet as a shopping medium: an integrated perspective. Youngstown, NY.: Cambria Press.
- MACHACKOVA, H. and SMAHEL, D. 2018. The perceived importance of credibility cues for the assessment of the trustworthiness of online information by visitors of health-related websites: The role of individual factors. Telematics and Informatics, 35(5): 1534-1541. DOI: 10.1016/j.tele.2018.03.021
Go to original source...
- METZGER, M. J. and FLANAGIN, A. J. 2013. Credibility and trust of information in online environments: The use of cognitive heuristics. J. Pragmatics, 59(B): 210-220. DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2013.07.012
Go to original source...
- METZGER, M. J., FLANAGIN, A. J., EYAL, K., LEMUS, D. S. and MCCANN, R., M. 2016. Credibility for the 21st Century: Integrating Perspectives on Source, Message, and Media Credibility in the Contemporary Media Environment. Annals of the International Communication Association, 27(1): 293-335. DOI: 10.1080/23808985.2003.11679029
Go to original source...
- MCKEOWN, B. and THOMAS, D. 1988. Q Methodology. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Go to original source...
- PETERSON, R. A., BALASUBRAMANIAN, S. and BRONNENBERG, B. J. 1997. Exploring the Implications of the Internet for Consumer Marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 25(4): 329-346. DOI: 10.1177/0092070397254005
Go to original source...
- STACKS, D. W. and SALWEN, M. B. (Eds.). 2009. An integrated approach to communication theory and research. 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge.
- STEPHENSON, W. 1936. The Inverted Factor Technique. British Journal of Psychology. General Section, 26(4): 344-361. DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1936.tb00803.x
Go to original source...
- TASHAKKORI, A. and TEDDLIE, C. 2010. Sage handbook of mixed methods in social. 2nd Edition. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
Go to original source...
- THE EPIMETRICS GROUP. 2010. Q-Assessor. [Online]. Available at: http://Q-assessor.com/ [Accessed: 2019, October 15].
- VAN EXEL, J. and DE GRAAF, G. 2005. Q methodology: A sneak preview. Available at: https://qmethod.org/portfolio/van-exel-and-de-graaf-a-q-methodology-sneak-preview/ [Accessed: 2019, October 15].
- WARD, W. 2009. Q and you: The application of Q methodology recreation research. In: Proceedings of the 2009 Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium. Gen. Tech. Rep. NRS-P-66. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station, pp. 75-81.
- WASIKE, B. 2017. Persuasion in 140 characters: Testing issue framing, persuasion and credibility via Twitter and online news articles in the gun control debate. Computers in Human Behavior, 66: 179-190. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2016.09.037
Go to original source...
- WATTS, S. and STENNER, P. 2012. Doing Q methodological research: theory, method and interpretation. Los Angeles: Sage.
Go to original source...
- WOLFINBARGER, M. and GILLY, M. C. 2001. Shopping Online for Freedom, Control, and Fun. California Management Review, 43(2): 34-55. DOI: 10.2307/41166074
Go to original source...
- ZABALA, A. 2014. Qmethod: A Package to Explore Human Perspectives Using Q Methodology. The R Journal, 6(2): 163-173. DOI: 10.32614/RJ-2014-032
Go to original source...
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY NC ND 4.0), which permits non-comercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is properly cited. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.