Management of Trust in the E-Marketplace: The Role of the Buyer's Experience in Building Trust

Abstract

The e-marketplace, or broker-managed online market, is one of today's most profitable e-business models. In these marketplaces, buyers routinely engage with businesses and individual sellers with whom they have had little or no prior interaction, making trust one of the most important issues in the e-marketplaces. Therefore, a clear understanding of the trust building process in the e-marketplace is important for the success in the market. In this study, we analyze the process by which e-marketplace customers develop trust in both a market-maker and sellers. Additionally, this analysis provides a theoretical framework to identify the antecedents of trust. In the framework, we suggest that the impact of trust on transaction intention is moderated by the customer's previous experiences in the e-marketplace. The theoretical model presented here was tested on survey and transaction data collected from 692 respondents. The results indicate that customers value the importance of trust in the market-maker and sellers differentially by the level of transaction experience. It is also shown that market-maker's characteristics (reputation, website's usability and security) and seller's characteristics (expertise) play an important role in the formation and development of trust toward a market-maker and sellers, respectively.

The Effect of Customer Service and Content Management on Online Retail Sales Performance: The Mediating Role of Customer Satisfaction

“…Academic research on website quality has also identified content and customer service as important dimensions in defining a service quality scale for online retailers (Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2003). Similar results were confirmed by Kim and Ahn (2007) in their empirical study of electronic marketplaces.…”

Understanding the consumer's online merchant selection process: The roles of product involvement, perceived risk, and trust expectation

“…The key distinction between emarketplaces and online storefronts lies in the role of the merchant, that is, e-marketplaces act as an intermediary between sellers and buyers, whereas storefronts (or e-tailers) are responsible for selling to consumers (Hong & Cho, 2011). Previous studies found that e-marketplaces tend to be riskier than e-tailers (Kim & Ahn, 2007). E-marketplaces have limited control over sales transactions in which sellers fulfill online orders.…”

“…Although online consumers are generally concerned about the legitimacy of vendors, and the authenticity of products or services, buyers using e-marketplaces are more likely to be exposed to the risks associated with the opportunistic behavior of sellers, than those using online storefronts (Pavlou & Gefen, 2004). In addition, in an e-marketplace, buyers routinely engage in transactions with unfamiliar businesses and individual sellers (Kim & Ahn, 2007). For this reason, e-marketplaces are typically considered riskier than e-tailers.…”

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