Role of Web Interface in Building Trust in B2B E-Exchanges

Trust And E-Commerce

Trust is defined as “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectations that the other party will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party” (Mayer, Davis & Schoorman 1995). In the context of e-commerce, trust may be regarded as a judgment made by the user, based on general experience learned from being a customer/seller and from the perception of a particular merchant. In other words, trust is also seen as a generalized expectancy that the word, promise, or written statement of another party can be relied on (Rotter, 1980).

To date, research on understanding online trust and e-commerce is limited (Grabner-Kräuter & Kaluscha 2003; Yoon 2002; Corritore et al. 2003; Kolsaker & Payne 2002). In their critical reviews of website and/or ecommerce trust, Corritore et al. (2003) and Grabner- Kräuter and Kaluscha (2003) argued that there is a lack a conceptual understanding of online trust and theoretical support for its role in online transactions and relationships. Without trust, businesses are unable to function (Reichheld et al. 2000). Jian, Bisantz, and Drury (2000) and Bailey et al. (2003) claim that trust not only plays a strong role in human-to-human interactions, but also plays a critical role in human-to-computer interactions.