Online Trust and e-Business Strategy: Concepts, Implications, and Future Directions

Authors: Venkatesh Shankar, Fareena Sultan, Glen L. Urban

Online trust is growing in importance. Consumers and businesses, feeling the pressure of economic downturn and terrorism, increasingly look to buy from and do business with the most trusted Web sites. Companies’ perception of customer trust has steadily evolved from being a construct involving security and privacy issues to a multidimensional, complex construct that includes credibility, emotional comfort and quality. Further, trust online spans the end-to-end aspects of e-business rather than being just based on the electronic storefront. Based on a review of selected studies, we propose a stakeholder theory of trust, articulate a broad conceptual framework of online trust including its underlying elements, antecedents, and consequences, and propose some promising future research avenues in online trust.