Control mechanisms for assessing the quality of handmade and artistic products in e-marketplace platforms

Selling handmade and artistic goods online is challenging since buyers need to be able to assess product quality before purchase. This study aims to explore how control mechanisms aid the assessment of the product quality of handmade and artistic goods. We do so by extracting control mechanisms for e-marketplace platforms from existing literature and discussing to what extent these are suitable for handmade and artistic goods. We found that existing literature mainly focuses on reputation systems. We reshaped the findings by conducting desk research to identify how control mechanisms are applied in a number of e-marketplaces. Our results show that in e-marketplaces that focus on selling handmade artistic products, a reputation system is not sufficient to ensure product quality in an online environment. Thus, it is critical to apply other control mechanisms which are more effective in increasing the trustworthiness of the seller of artistic and handmade goods. Last, we also suggest alternative control mechanisms to be explored in future research.