When Reputation Engenders Trust: An Empirical Investigation in Business-to-Consumer Electronic Commerce

Consumers' enhanced risk perception is an important challenge to bemet in electronic commerce. The research presented here casts new light onthe concept of trust, which is a vital mechanism when it comes to reduce perceivedrisk. Trust is conceptualized as a multi?dimensional concept comprisedof a person's trusting attitudes toward the vendor, the system and theself as well as his or her trusting intention to buy from a vendor on theInternet. Based upon an online survey among 473 German Internet users, theinterrelationships between the dimensions of trust and the influential roleof a vendor's as well as the system's reputation to engender trustis analysed. Results show that a person's trusting intention is moststrongly influenced by a person's trusting attitude toward the vendor.The role of reputation to enhance trust is particularly pronounced if theconsumer's experience with a particular vendor or the Internet as a shopping environment in general are low. Implications of the research findings are discussed.

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