Consumer trust in e-commerce web sites

Abstract

Trust is at once an elusive, imprecise concept, and a critical attribute that must be engineered into e-commerce systems. Trust conveys a vast number of meanings, and is deeply dependent upon context. The literature on engineering trust into e-commerce systems reflects these ambiguous meanings; there are a large number of articles, but there is as yet no clear theoretical framework for the investigation of trust in e-commerce. E -commerce, however, is predicated on trust; indeed, any e-commerce vendor that fails to establish a trusting relationship with their customers is doomed. There is a very clear need for specific guidance on e-commerce system attributes and business operations that will effectively promote consumer trust. To address this need, we have conducted a meta-study of the empirical literature on trust in e-commerce systems. This area of research is still immature, and hence our meta-analysis is qualitative rather than quantitative. We identify the major theoretical frameworks that have been proposed in the literature, and propose a qualitative model incorporating the various factors that have been empirically found to influence consumer trust in e-commerce. As this model is too complex to be of practical use, we explore subsets of this model that have the strongest support in the literature, and discuss the implications of this model for Web site design. Finally, we outline key conceptual and methodological needs for future work on this topic.

Social proof in social media shopping: An experimental design research

“…The capability of social networks that allows for users' content participation, such as reviews and recommendations, for example, represents the major advantages of social commerce [18]. These social proof techniques increased consumers trust towards the online sellers and their products, and hence, increased online shopping engagement [2,3,4].…”

“…Online buyers' reliance on social community shared information, a kind of social proof techniques, is generally useful and effective at increasing consumer trust [2]. Trust formation from trusted sources is the key to a successful online purchasing engagement [3,4].…”

An Empirical Study on the Factors of National Culture Values Influencing Intention of E-commerce

“…Beatty et al [10] summarized three theoretical perspectives on trust: psychological, sociological, and economic and organizational. From a psychological perspective, an indication of trust is the willingness of an individual (the trustor) to expose himself to the risk of being exploited by some other actor (the trustee).…”

“…From a psychological perspective, an indication of trust is the willingness of an individual (the trustor) to expose himself to the risk of being exploited by some other actor (the trustee). From an economic and organizational perspective, trust is an important lubricant that reduces bargaining costs, with institutional trust being one of the most important, representing the belief that third party actions will constrain other actors from acting in an untrustworthy manner [10]. It is widely recognized that trust is one of the most important premises to achieve success in business.…”

Trusting the Social Web: issues and challenges

“…Beatty et al [4] conducted a study of consumer trust on e-commerce Web sites, whereas Grandison et al [9] surveyed trust from the point of view of applications to identify trust needs for e-commerce applications. Similarly, Artz and Gil [3] provided an overview of trust research in the Semantic Web, whereas Malik and Bouguettaya [14] looked at the issues of trust in the Service Web.…”