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Sunday 2 June 2013

CASE STUDY : INVESTIGATING TRUST IN E-COMMERCE : A LITERATURE REVIEW AND A MODEL FOR ITS FORMATION IN CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS



JTU396E E COMMERCE ASSIGNMENT 2

As a matter of fact, trust is the essential element in customer point of view. Any company would be undoubtedly believed it is slowly getting the momentum and coming through the selected e-commerce application and tools. Trust by definition[1] in a social context, has several connotations. Definitions of trust typically refer to a situation characterized by the following aspects: One party (trustor) is willing to rely on the actions of another party (trustee); the situation is directed to the future. In addition, the trustor (voluntarily or forcedly) abandons control over the actions performed by the trustee. As a consequence, the trustor is uncertain about the outcome of the other's actions; he can only develop and evaluate expectations. The uncertainty involves the risk of failure or harm to the trustor if the trustee will not behave as desired. According to (Lewis and Weigert, 1985; Butler, 1991; Barber, 1983) trust is a highly complex, multi-dimensional and (Luhmann, 1979) stated that it is context-specific phenomenon. Papadopoulou, Kanellis and Martakos (2001) stated in their case study, trust is fast becoming the focus of many Information Systems researcher and that trust and relationship building can be proposed by a theoretical model for the formation of trust in the customer-business relationship. Five categories of trust in e-commerce was identified, and analyzed into three major dimensions, namely determinants, approaches and consequences. (Please refer to Appendix : Table 1). According to Papadopoulou, Kanellis and Martakos (2001), the five categories of trust types as presented in Table 1 indicate that research on e-commerce trust is associated with the online system/application, the vendor, the Internet shopping process, people at both intra[2]organizational and inter[3]organizational level and firm trust in e-business.
Determinant factors (Papadopoulou, Kanellis and Martakos, 2001) represent factors that influence trust in e-commerce or the lack of it.  The factors proposed to have an impact on trust are associated with the personality of the online consumer, the system, the information, the vendor, the transaction, the business stakeholders, and the external environment.
The approaches proposed to address the problem of lack of trust are mainly recommendations and suggested guidelines to designers of Information Systems (Shneiderman, 2000) and Internet companies towards establishing partial dimensions of trust in various contexts and do not include specific methods or processes for the formation of trust. They involve the design of the e-commerce system interface (Egger, 2000), the content and the range of information provided (Urban et al., 2000) and the way it is organized and displayed, security and privacy issues (Hoffman et al., 1999), the provision of services, fulfillment, and the business strategy in general (Urban et al., 2000; Einwiller et al., 2000).
The consequence of trust is clearly reflected by the diversity of determinants and approaches suggested in the case study. It is depending on the trust type questionable and the purpose of the case study. Furthermore, trust has been considered as a requirement that may result in reducing consumers’ perceived risk (Cheung and Lee, 2000; Einwiller et al., 2000).
There are numbers of researchers that highlighted and define the categorization of trust models namely Egger, Chung & Lee, Ambrose and Johnson, Kini & Choobineh and Tan & Thoen ( please refer to appendix : Table 2 ) based on four main predecessors, namely consumer characteristic, vendor related believes, environmental characteristics and application related characteristics. According to Papadopoulou, Kanellis and Martakos (2001), the findings of the trust models in the Table 2, showed that the models they describe are limited to presenting the determinants of trust and the way they interrelate and influence its creation. As a result, they do not propose specific methods or processes for trust formation. This is the main reason this case study is written to address the needs of the conceptual model for the formation of trust in business-to-consumer e-commerce relationships. The three aspect of trust, representing its constituents, its determinants and its development modes, have been synthesized and theoretically interrelated, resulting in an integrated model and a vertical understanding of how trust is formed in a relational exchange between two parties ( Please refer to Appendix : Table 3 ).
Papadopoulou, Kanellis and Martakos (2001) model of trust formation ( Please refer to Appendix : Figure 1 ) has been build based on the assumption that a repetition interaction with promise made, enabled and kept within an electronic servicescape. According to Wanninger’s et al. (1997), a servicescape is one of the three primary components that comprise an e-commerce information system. The other two are the supporting infrastructure and customer database & analytical tools to support the relationship marketing.
The model introduced in the case study indicated that a transference process consists of disposition to trust, institution-based trust (McKnight and Chervany, 1996) and initial trusting beliefs. Initially, customer has a tendency to trust others based on personality and cultural factors which is called ‘disposition to trust’, enhanced by the situations related which is called ‘institution-based trust’, which involves legal aspects associated with e-commerce and perceptions regarding the security and privacy offered by the business. According to Doney and Cannon (1997), the customer has initial trusting beliefs that have been formed through the transference process. As a result of this, the customer is being open to promises made by the business. Then the customer is interested and forms a trusting intention towards it and anticipates the promise to be enabled. 
When the servicescape allow the promise, the trusting intention need to be manifested and this will cause the customer to accept the risk inherent in the situation and actually depend on the promise, thus act in a trusting behavior. The positive impact on the customer’s perceptions by keeping the promise will definitely cause the customer to actively interact with the servicescape considering the quality of the interaction taking place and future expectation by the customer towards the model. According to Carlzon (1987), this is call “moment of truth”. The service encounter is evaluated by the customer and comparison is made by the service expected and currently received. The process would include customer satisfaction element and reflected in the customer’s trusting beliefs (McKnight and Chervany, 1996). ( Please refer to Appendix : Figure 2 ).
Papadopoulou, Kanellis and Martakos (2001) stated that trust evolves over time as the customer engages in repeated interactions with promises being fulfilled within the servicescape. Each time a promise is made, enabled and kept, it is evaluated with the intentionality, the capability and the credibility process confirming customer’s trusting beliefs in the business benevolence, competence and credibility. Trust[4] can be attributed to relationships between people. It can be demonstrated that humans have a natural disposition to trust and to judge trustworthiness that can be traced to the neurobiological structure and activity of a human brain.
The research paper is not fully completed and need to be revised again in the future specially in the categorization part. A further research need to be done and gain more inputs as the research goes on continuously.
As the time goes by, the model introduced by the case study writer would be definitely assisting and supporting its entity discussed. The trust concept on customer would reflected the business as a whole and the firm accordingly.

Appendix
Table 1

Table 2
Table 3

Figure 1
Figure 2



[1] By referring to Wikipedia : The Free Encyclopedia.
[2] “The focus is within” from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/intra-
[3] “The focus is outside” from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/inter-
[4] By referring to Wikipedia : The Free Encyclopedia

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