A fuzzy expert system to evaluate customer's trust in B2C E-Commerce websites

With the profound Internet perforation being the most significant advancement in the technology of the last few years, the platform for e-Commerce growth is set. E-Commerce industry has experienced astounding growth in recent years. For the successful implementation of a B2C E-business, it is necessary to understand the trust issues associated with the online environment which holds the customer back from shopping online. This paper proposes a model to discern the impact of trust factors pertaining in Indian E-Commerce marketplace on the customers' intention to purchase from an e-store. The model is based on Mamdani Fuzzy Inference System which is used for computation of the trust index of an e-store in order to assess the confidence level of the customers in the online store. The study first identifies the trust factors and thereby investigates the experts on them in order to examine the significance of the factors. Thereafter, the customers' responses regarding B2C E-Commerce websites with respect to the trust parameters are studied which leads to the development of the fuzzy system. The questionnaire survey method was used to gather primary data which was later used for the purpose of rule formation for the fuzzy inference system.