Buyers, Trust Perceptions on Electronic Commerce: An Inter-temporal Perspective

Abstract

Each year, electronic commerce gains more relevance in retail scenario, what brings along new tendencies for retailers. In this virtual transaction, trust assumes an important role for study, since it’s fundamental to viable buyer-seller transaction. Hence, 43 trust attributes embedded in e-commerce literature review were used as independent variables to verify which ones play significant role in buyer’s trust construction and perception. Utilizing multiple linear regression analysis, results demonstrated that there’re eight variables that better justify buyers trust perceptions: trust in utilized technology; positive experience in previously transactions; belief in seller’s competence; influence of other’s opinions; maintenance of buyer’s privacy; deception over the whole Internet mechanisms; pre-disposition to trust on sellers; product information available on website. These results demonstrate, first of all, variables the better explain trust perception on the e-commerce, pointing out where managers should invest their resources to increase this trust. Therefore, the study shows that in the developed model that some variables are from buyer’s past experiences, denoting the existence of inter-temporal perspective for buyer’s trust in e-commerce transactions.
Keywords: Electronic commerce, E-commerce, Inter-temporal perspective, Trust.