Influence of Virtual Communities on Online Consumers ’ Trust

This research aims to help e-tailers improve their relationship with consumers in order to gain their trust. It does this by showing how the virtual community affects online consumer’s trust and how a virtual community can be built to improve the consumer’s trust for enterprises. Virtual community and electronic commerce are both new research areas that are becoming more popular according to recent academy studies. However in much of the research, the virtual community and e-commerce are examined in separate streams. This is seen as inappropriate since many online shopping websites contain a virtual community and many virtual communities and social networks contain e-commerce contents. To enquire into this, academic research literature linking the virtual community, e-commerce, and trust was examined. The findings highlight the role of validity of virtual communities, sociality of virtual communities, and safety of virtual communities to engender consumers' trust. The result indicates that the virtual community as an important medium can assist marketers in developing trust with their e-consumers.

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