Determinants of online buyer trust. A comparison with the auction system

Abstract

Studies on electronic Internet commerce are an important part of the research in marketing, bur there are still few works that have dealt with auction systems. Because of the especial characteristics of online buying, one of the most important and the most difficult challenges in the context of an online purchase as opposed to offline purchases is how to generate consumer trust. Nevertheless, it is likely that the signals that generate trust will differ in online auctions from online purchasing through other websites. This work presents a model that attempts to capture the effects of web-site signals on consumer trust and draws comparisons between auction and the rest of online shopping contexts. The main results and implications are presented using information collected from a sample of online buyers.

Keywords

• Electronic commerce
• auction
• trust
• service quality
• privacy and security policies
• web site design