Consumer trust in B2C e-Commerce and the importance of social presence: experiments in e-Products and e-Services

Reducing social uncertainty—understanding, predicting, and controlling the behavior of other people—is a central motivating force of human behavior. When rules and customs are not sufficient, people rely on trust and familiarity as primary mechanisms to reduce social uncertainty. The relative paucity of regulations and customs on the Internet makes consumer familiarity and trust especially important in the case of e-Commerce. Yet the lack of an interpersonal exchange and the one-time nature of the typical business transaction on the Internet make this kind of consumer trust unique, because trust relates to other people and is nourished through interactions with them.This study validates a four-dimensional scale of trust in the context of e-Products and revalidates it in the context of e-Services. The study then shows the influence of social presence on these dimensions of this trust, especially benevolence, and its ultimate contribution to online purchase intentions.     

Consumer trust in e-commerce in the United States,Singapore and China

This study examines the antecedents and consequences of consumer trust in the United States, Singapore and China. The results show that reputation and system assurance of an Internet vendor and consumers’ propensity to trust are positively related to consumer trust. Consumers’ trust has a positive relationship with attitude and a negative relationship with perceived risk. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Trust,confidence, familiarity,and support for land-based recirculating aquaculture facilities

Surveys in three U.S. localities (n = 523) with proposed or existing land-based aquaculture facilities probed trust's relationship with perceived net benefits and public intentions to cooperate with siting of this novel technology. The trust, confidence, and cooperation (TCC) model posits that shared values shape willingness to be vulnerable to others (trust), while past performance shapes certainty that others will behave as expected (confidence). Trust affects confidence given moral outweighs performance information, possibly varying by familiarity. Other research suggests that trust shapes benefit and risk perceptions, which drive cooperation (defined here by potentially observable behavior: voting on siting, trying to influence government decisions directly or through citizen groups, and buying or eating facility fish). Confirmatory factor analyses suggested that a two-factor model fit the trust/confidence measures better than a one-factor model or a two-factor model without inter-factor correlation, indicating (despite a strong association of trust and confidence) that they are empirically distinct. Path analyses suggested that trust had stronger direct effects on cooperation than did confidence, reflecting the TCC notion that moral information underlying trust judgments is more influential, and stronger indirect effects through benefit-risk judgments. Model fit was better than if the benefit-risk mediator was omitted. Trust in government had a small direct effect on cooperation and confidence, but a large effect on trust in the corporation, and model fit was much worse if any of these paths was omitted. Low familiarity with the project lowered both model fit and trust–confidence association. We discuss implications for risk analysis theory and practice.     

Followers' moral judgments and leaders' integrity-based transgressions: A synthesis of literatures

This paper reviews the state of knowledge about integrity-based transgressions with an emphasis on the leader-follower relationship. Our review highlighted many important contributions of this literature, but, it revealed several limitations that should be addressed within a followership paradigm. We then synthesized the integrity and trust literatures with a targeted review of moral experimental philosophy. Cushman's (2008) dual process model suggests that because followers simultaneously assess leaders' intentions and their causal nexus with negative outcomes, they might judge behavioral and moral integrity transgressions in different ways. Judgments of moral condemnation should primarily be a function of perceived intent while blame and punishment of the leader based on behavior should be jointly affected by cause and intent. This moral assessment is expected to influence followers' trust through its effect on moral identity. A framework is offered for guiding future studies of followers' interpretations of leaders' integrity-based transgressions.     

Servant leadership,employer brand perception,trust in leaders and turnover intentions: a sequential mediation model

The study aimed to examine the impact of the servant leadership style on employee turnover intentions by investigating the sequential mediating effects of employer brand perception and level of trust subordinates have in their leaders. Results of the study were obtained by analysing data collected from 253 employees working in Indian organizations. The results fully support the hypotheses proposed in the study, illustrating that perceived servant leadership style is negatively associated with employee turnover intentions. Further, servant leadership-turnover intentions relationship is sequentially mediated by employer brand perception and the level of trust subordinates have in their leaders. The study also found that only the servant leadership style followed by leaders was not enough to directly influence the level of trust employees placed in their leaders. A positive and strong employer brand perception emerged as an important mechanism that helped servant leaders gain the trust of their followers. The theoretical and managerial implications are further discussed in the light of these findings.     

Pricing and the Internet:: Frictionless Commerce or Pricer’s Paradise?

Are firms competing in a new world of frictionless e-commerce or is the Internet a pricer’s paradise? It is not safe, at the moment, to say that the Internet is lowering online prices, decreasing price dispersion and increasing online customer price sensitivity.The strategic issue for firms pricing on the Net is avoiding the ‘commodity trap’ and taking advantage of the ‘other side’ of information transparency. Firms should increasingly rely on finer segmentation of their customers and resort to dynamic and smart pricing, product and price versioning and bundling. Multichannel and customer lifetime value pricing will become strategic issues.     

BOCOG's outsourcing contracts: The vendor's perspective

To date, most research on outsourcing is modeled from the client's perspective. In this paper, we approach the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) outsourcing contracts from the vendors’ perspective. Since a vendor always has the option to accept or not accept an outsourcing contract, we use the theory of options to analyze the vendor's decision making, i.e., the trigger point, which coincides with the optimal profit level, of the vendor's decision to pursue an outsourcing contract. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the model and its potential benefits for vendors’ decision making.     

Capability,Quality, and Performance of Offshore IS Vendors: A Theoretical Framework and Empirical Investigation

Information systems (IS) offshoring has become a widespread practice and a strategic sourcing choice for many firms. While much has been written by researchers about the factors that lead to successful offshoring arrangements from the client's viewpoint, the vendor's perspective has been largely scarce. The vendor perspective is equally important as offshore IS vendors need to make important decisions in terms of delivering operational and strategic performance and aligning their resources and processes in order to meet or exceed targeted outcomes. In this article, we propose and test a three‐level capability–quality–performance (CQP) theoretical framework to understand vendor outcomes and their antecedents. The first level of the framework represents three vendor capabilities: relationship management, contract management, and information technology management. The second level has three mediating variables representing process quality: partnership, service, and deliverable quality. The third level has three dependent variables representing vendor outcomes: operational performance, strategic performance, and satisfaction. The model was tested with 188 vendor firms from India and China, the two most popular destinations for IS offshoring. Results support the CQP framework; vendor capabilities are significant predictors of intermediate quality measures, which in turn affect vendor outcomes. Implications of the study findings to both theory development and IS offshore vendor strategic decision making are discussed.     

Trust and Risk Communication in High-Risk Organizations: A Test of Principles from Social Risk Research

This study explored the effects of open communication about occupational risks on workers' trust beliefs and trust intentions toward risk management, and the resilience of these beliefs and intentions to further risk information. An experimental survey of 393 student nurses showed the importance of open communication in the development of worker trust in risk management. Consistent with the trust asymmetry principle, we found that the increase in trust beliefs following open communication was weaker than the reduction in trust following a lack of communication. Further, the level of trust developed through communication (or lack of) influenced the way that subsequent risk information was processed. Negative risk information reduced trust beliefs in nurses with already low levels of trust while positive risk information increased trust beliefs only in those with already high levels. A similar pattern of results emerged for nurses' trust intentions, although the magnitude of these effects was weaker. The implications of these findings for occupational risk management are discussed.     

Components supplier patterns in the UK motor industry

There has been tremendous Western interest in the ‘Japanese’ model of manufacturing, particularly in the motor industry in recent years. Western vehicle assemblers profess to be developing closer, higher trust relations with their suppliers to support practices such as just-in-time production and total quality. Comparatively little work has been carried out into the relations between first tier suppliers and their suppliers. This paper reports a study into the relations between a UK ‘first tier’ supplier to the European vehicle industry and 29 of its suppliers, and describes how the Japanese manufacturing model is making itself felt beyond the first tier suppliers.     

Leadership coaching,leader role-efficacy,and trust in subordinates. A mixed methods study assessing leadership coaching as a leadership development tool

In this study, we used a two-phase exploratory sequential design consisting of qualitative and quantitative research methods to assess leadership coaching as a leadership development tool. A focus group study combined with a review of theory resulted in hypotheses linking coaching to increased leader role-efficacy (LRE) and leader's trust in subordinates (LTS). Using data from leaders participating in a six month coaching program and a control group, the results showed that LRE and LTS increased in the coaching group, but not in the control group. We also hypothesized that increased trust in subordinates would be related to subordinates' psychological empowerment and turnover intentions. A significant relationship between increased LTS and reduced turnover intentions was found. Finally, we found that the degree of facilitative behavior from the coach positively affected the changes in both leader role-efficacy and trust in subordinates. While the results should be interpreted with caution as the sample is small, our findings support claims that coaching represents a promising leadership development tool. Furthermore, the results regarding trust in subordinates represent contributions to the development of a relational perspective on leadership development.     

The Determinants of the Boundary-spanning Functions of Japanese Self-initiated Expatriates in Japanese Subsidiaries in China: Individual Skills and Human Resource Management

Self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) who work for a subsidiary of a multinational enterprise from their country of origin and hence are familiar with both countries' language and culture can be expected to act as boundary-spanners between the assigned expatriates sent from the parent country and host country nationals, and between the headquarters and the subsidiary. We develop a new model of boundary-spanning that encompasses both individual and organizational antecedents and validate the model using survey data from Japanese-affiliated companies in China. We find that familiarity with Chinese language and culture and the potential dual allegiance of SIEs contribute to enhancing their boundary-spanning behavior. We also find that relationships of trust among the parties concerned (social capital) and global career opportunities for such self-initiated expatriates (geocentric staffing) have positive influences on their dual allegiance. Finally, normative and systems integration of human resource management are associated with increasing levels of social capital and geocentric staffing.     

Security Assurance: How Online Service Providers Can Influence Security Control Perceptions and Gain Trust

Security researchers agree that security control is a difficult to observe credence quality of online services that Internet users cannot easily assess through research or experience. Yet there is evidence that users form perceptions of security control that strongly determine how much trust they put in online services. This study investigates whether users’ security control perceptions arise solely from their predispositions or whether online service providers can influence them. The study also examines whether these seemingly undependable perceptions of security control lead to trust or whether more traditional factors might offer a better explanation of trust under security risks. To address these issues, this study proposes a new theory of security assurance that integrates the frameworks of trust and quality signals. The results show that rather than being guided by predispositions, users appear to mainly assess security control based on indirect cues controlled by service providers. Importantly, Internet users do not treat the credence quality of security the same way they treat qualities that can be understood through search and experience. Although returning users develop security control perceptions and trust from the usual heuristics of ongoing relationships, they also continue to evaluate market information about service providers like they do in new relationships. The proposed model offers a new perspective of how users respond to the uncertain and technically challenging qualities prevalent in online services.     

多渠道零售环境下消费者渠道选择意愿形成机理研究——产品类别特征的调节作用

传统与网络结合的多渠道正成为零售业的标准模式,多渠道零售环境下,消费者渠道决策发生了根本变化,在不同购买决策过程阶段运用不同渠道的行为日益普遍,但尚未有文献基于搜索信息和产品购买两个阶段,引入产品类别特征对消费者渠道选择意愿形成机理展开研究。运用感知价值理论、信任转移理论构建了消费者搜索意愿和购买意愿形成机理概念模型,分析了渠道属性、渠道内锁定、渠道间协同对消费者搜索与购买意愿的影响及产品搜索性与风险性对其的调节作用,运用联立方程建模并求解发现：渠道属性、渠道内锁定、渠道间协同显著影响消费者搜索意愿和购买意愿;购买高风险搜索产品（如计算机、手机）、低风险搜索产品（如书、文具）、高风险体验产品（如服装、化妆品）、低风险体验产品（如玩具、零食）时,渠道属性、渠道内锁定、渠道间协同对消费者渠道选择意愿的影响存在明显差异;渠道搜索属性如信息有效性、搜索便利性、品种丰富性、社会互动性正向影响消费者搜索意愿,搜索努力负向影响消费者搜索意愿,渠道购买属性如服务质量、购买便利性、享乐性正向影响消费者购买意愿,购买努力、购买风险负向影响消费者购买意愿;传统渠道具有锁定性,网络渠道缺乏锁定性,但购买低风险搜索产品时,网络渠道具有锁定性;购买高风险产品时,传统渠道与网络渠道存在协同性,对于高风险搜索产品,消费者网络渠道搜索意愿正向影响其传统渠道购买意愿,而对于高风险体验产品,还存在消费者传统渠道搜索意愿正向影响其网络渠道购买意愿的协同性,但对于低风险产品,传统渠道与网络渠道缺乏协同性。     

Managing Internet Product Returns: A Focus on Effective Service Operations

Product returns present one of the biggest operational challenges in the world of Internet retailing due to the sheer volume and cost of processing returns. But returns also represent an often‐missed opportunity to manage customer relationships and build customer loyalty to the retailer. Based upon data from a survey of 464 customers of five different Internet retailers, this article explores how firms' returns management systems affect loyalty intentions. We draw upon extant literature in the fields of Internet retailing, service quality, supply chain management, and customer satisfaction/loyalty to develop a model and a set of hypotheses relating ten latent variables in the service returns offering area. Our resulting structural equation model provides evidence of the impact of the returns management system upon customer loyalty intentions. The model also identifies effects on loyalty intentions arising from customers' satisfaction with, and perceptions of, the value of the returns service offered. These findings will help inform managers' choices regarding investment in the returns management system as an element of service quality improvement and a potential means of improved profitability. In addition, this study's empirical exploration and testing of a returns management model in the Internet retailing environment is a contribution to the currently underrepresented body of academic literature linking marketing and supply chain management in the context of end consumers.     

Intentions to Seek Information About the Influenza Vaccine: The Role of Informational Subjective Norms,Anticipated and Experienced Affect,and Information Insufficiency Among Vaccinated and Unvaccinated People

When deciding whether to vaccinate, people often seek information through consequential processes that are not currently well understood. A survey of a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 2,091) explored the factors associated with intentions to seek influenza vaccine information in the 2018–2019 influenza season. This survey shed light on what motivates intentions to seek information about the influenza vaccine through the lens of the risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model. The model explained information-seeking intentions well among both unvaccinated and vaccinated respondents. Key findings show that informational subjective norms, information insufficiency, and different types of affect are strong predictors of information-seeking intentions. Theoretical insights on extending the RISP model and practical guidance on designing interventions are provided.     

Effect of Perceived Crisis Response on Consumers' Behavioral Intentions During a Company Scandal – An Intercultural Perspective

In the context of a multi-national company scandal, namely Volkswagen's Dieselgate, we examine the effect of customers' perception of organizational crisis response on their revenge and avoidance intentions in different cultural settings. Using data collected in the US and in Germany, we are able to show that the perception of appropriate crisis response reduces customers' revenge as well as avoidance intentions. However, due to the domestic bias of German respondents, the mechanism linking perception of the organization's crisis response to the respective outcomes differs between Germany and the US. Our results demonstrate for the first time that domestic bias is not always associated with being an amplifier of positive factors; rather, in the context of an organizational scandal, it dampens the effects of organizational crisis response.     

The Intuitive Detection Theorist (IDT) Model of Trust in Hazard Managers

The intuitive detection theorist (IDT) model of trust posits that trust in hazard managers stems from judgments about their performance on three criteria: their ability to discriminate safe from dangerous situations (discrimination ability); their tendency under uncertainty to assume danger is present (response bias); and their propensity to be open and honest with the public about events (communication bias). The current article tests the model's robustness using findings from three experiments and four surveys conducted by two different research teams. Study‐specific analyses and an overall analysis of the seven studies combined confirm that all three of the IDT model's dimensions are important for trust, explaining on average 43% of trust variance. These effects occurred largely independently of hazard topic, research method, or investigator. Hypothesized interaction effects among the dimensions, based upon earlier studies, were weak and contradictory; this is the first known study of interactions among trust model variables.     

Nurturing clients’ trust to encourage engagement success during the customization of ERP systems

Customization is a crucial, lengthy, and costly aspect in the successful implementation of ERP systems, and has, accordingly, become a major specialty of many vendors and consulting companies. This study examines how such companies can increase their clients’ perception of engagement success through increased client trust that is brought about through responsive and dependable customization.Survey data from ERP customization clients show that, as hypothesized, clients’ trust influenced their perception of engagement success with the company. The data also show that clients’ trust in the customization company was increased when the company behaved in accordance with client expectations by being responsive, and decreased when the company behaved in a manner that contradicted these expectations by not being dependable. Responses to an open-ended question addendum attached to the survey corroborated the importance of responsiveness and dependability. Implications for customization companies and research on trust are discussed.