The topic of information transparency is becoming increasingly important in the online B2C (business-to-consumer) clothing industry. While both information transparency and perceived brand credibility are already known to be important for the firm, research shows that it is challenging to understand how information transparency influences brand credibility. It is because of the rapid growth of the online clothing and fashion industry that the significance of this research is rooted. Therefore, this paper set out to explore the influence of information transparency on perceived brand credibility in the online B2C clothing industry by performing a qualitative analysis. Furthermore, this research takes inspiration from existing literature that was conducted on information transparency. This research applies the same dimensions of information transparency from the existing literature by Zhou, et al., (2018) – namely product, vendor, and transaction transparency – to act as a framework for this research and understand how they act to influence the perceptions of brand credibility. Three brand credibility dimensions put forth by Keller (2013) – perceived expertise, trustworthiness, and likeability – were used to understand what brand credibility entails. It was found that product transparency and vendor transparency influence perceptions of brand credibility through the dimensions of trustworthiness and likeability, while transaction transparency influences perceptions of brand credibility through all dimensions of brand credibility as specified by Keller, (2013).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-130637 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Sayre, Kristian, Bitai, Daniel |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för marknadsföring och turismvetenskap (MTS) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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