Abstract:

Building customer trust remains one of the main challenges facing electronic commerce today. The formation of trust is still an open issue largely because previous research efforts have not explained trust formation as a process which can be influenced through a number of discrete interaction stages with the vendor. We present an empirically tested model that describes these stages and shows that customers come to trust incrementally as they assess the online vendor’s benevolence, competence, integrity and predictability. Based on these findings, we derive a set of principles and practical guidelines that can inform and guide the development of trust-centric online stores.