An experimental study of service signaling in the digital environment

Abstract

Researches maintain that quality signaling can take place on the internet through customer assessment of the organization of the website. Researches, however, seek to evaluate situations that involve the commercialization of goods in e-commerce and neglect the reality of services. Based on the theory of quality signaling, it conducts research into consumer perceptions of Internet service companies. Based on the development of an experiment, it was sought to verify the influence of the quality signaling of a service organization on the consumer’s confidence, quality perception, and purchase intention. To do this, the investigation included the creation of a fictitious company of services and the development of websites with different levels of signaling (high investment, medium investment, and low investment). Results from variance analysis (ANOVA) confirmed the hypotheses and the existence of significant differences between the manipulated groups. Correlation tests also showed that there are significant associations between the perception of investment (credibility of the signal) and confidence, the perception of quality and intention to purchase the service.