The influence of scope and timing of reliability assurance in B2B e-commerce

This study investigates potential demand for third-party assurance reports in business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B e-commerce). We experimentally analyze 95 purchasing professionals' decisions to recommend using a B2B exchange. The experiment is a 2 × 2 between-participants design varying the scope and timing of an assurance report with an additional control condition of no assurance. The results suggest that purchasing professionals are more likely to recommend use of the exchange when general assurance over the reliability of the exchange's system is present than when specific assurance over the reliability of transaction information is present. Purchasing professionals are also more likely to recommend using the exchange when the assurance report is continuous than when it is static, issued at a point in time. However, the results also suggest that participants are less likely to recommend using the exchange when specific information assurance or static assurance is present than when assurance is not present at all. Further, other factors besides assurance, especially trust in the trading partner and propensity to trust, have a stronger influence on the decision to use a B2B exchange than the presence of either continuous or systems assurance. Potential implications for practice include redesigning existing assurance services to provide continuous assurance, de-emphasizing formalized reports and considering assurance services over other factors, such as web site design.