EBQUAL: A Success Model of E-Business

E-business is a new type of promising business model in the Internet era. However, there have been not many researches on what are the success factors of e-business. In this paper, it is assumed that building trust is one of the most important success factors. Based on the assumption, among others, the quality of e-business is proposed to be the source of trust in business-to-customer e-markets. In other words, it is assumed that increasing the quality of ebusiness is one of the most important critical success factors in the competitive business-to-customer e-markets. Based on the assumption, the quality of e-business is analyzed, including the relationships with other factors such as trust and discontinuity. A conceptual framework is introduced to propose that the quality of e-business is a source of trust in e-markets. In addition, discontinuity is proposed to negatively affect the quality of e-business and trust. Recovery is proposed to moderate the impact of discontinuity on quality and trust

The Invisible Platform of E-Business: Trust

E-Business is the new business imperative in the age of Internet. With the features of Internet, business can extend their business activities across space and time. Without traditional fact-to-face interaction, most of the e-business activities can be done through networks. Since they do not have to see each other during e-business transaction, the levels of trust between members are pretty low. Mutual trust within a business, between suppliers and retailers, and between sellers and customers is the most important successful factors of e-business. Based on the review of literatures, we proposed that trust is the most important invisible platform for the e-business. In this article, we discuss the relationship between trust and three major components of e-business: (1) the trust for effective knowledge management (KM) within an organization; (2) the trust between organization and customer for effective customer relationship management (CRM); and (3) the trust between organizations for supply chain management (SCM)

Trust for E-Business Management

How do we develop and sustain trust? What is the process for building trust between business partners in virtual environments? Is there a significant difference between the development and sustainability of trust online or offline? In this paper, we first introduce the concept of e-business and discuss the importance of trust for ensuring effective collaboration. Secondly, we discuss the relationships between e-collaboration and trust for managing e-business. Thirdly, we suggest a framework, which may help facilitate the development and sustainability of trust in an online environment. Finally, implications for the development and sustainability of trust online, which can be used to understand the interplay among technologies, e-business and collaboration is provided. We suggest that the implications of this study are three-fold: trustworthy relationships among business partners, effective sustainable collaboration, and optimal use of ICT for supporting e-business activities

Business-to-consumer e-commerce in Nigeria: Prospects and challenges

The growth of Internet usage in Nigeria continues to increase, recording over 90% growth rate between 2000 and 2008. While businesses in Nigeria are reported to have online access with opportunity for ecommercial activities, customers in the country however access business websites only to source for information but make purchases the traditional way. This paper aims at assessing the prospects and challenges of Business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce implementation in Nigeria from the consumers’ perspective. Survey research was adopted for this study. Research hypotheses were formulated and questionnaire designed and administered randomly to 900 respondents. Collected data was used to evaluate the acceptance of B2C e-commerce using the extended technology acceptance model (TAM). The extended TAM combines task-technology fit, relationship related construct: trust and risk, and the two TAM constructs to determine factors influencing consumer acceptance of B2C e-commerce in Nigeria. Findings revealed that there are significant relationships between the model variables. Tasktechnology fit and perceived usefulness have significant relationships with intentions to use, having a correlation coefficient of 0.2623 and 0.2002 respectively. Similarly, the interrelationship among trust, perceived risk, and behavioral intention are significant. The effect of risk on trust was statistically showing that risk is a predictor of trust. Risk has a high significant on trust and trust in turn has low significant effect on behavioral intention. Adding TTF and its relationships to the TAM also fit the data. The relationship between task-technology fit, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and intention are significant

Trusted operational scenarios - Trust building mechanisms and strategies for electronic marketplaces.

This document presents and describes the trusted operational scenarios, resulting from the research and work carried out in Seamless project. The report presents identified collaboration habits of small and medium enterprises with low e-skills, trust building mechanisms and issues as main enablers of online business relationships on the electronic marketplace, a questionnaire analysis of the level of trust acceptance and necessity of trust building mechanisms, a proposal for the development of different strategies for the different types of trust mechanisms and recommended actions for the SEAMLESS project or other B2B marketplaces.trust building mechanisms, trust, B2B networks, e-marketplaces

Trading Partner Trust in Electronic Commerce Participation

The growth of business-to-business e-commerce has highlighted the role of computer and communications technologies as well as inter-organizational trust in developing and maintaining business-to-business relationships. Despite the acknowledged importance of trust, only a limited amount of research exists and that examines the role of trust in these relationships. By investigating inter-organizational relationships andtrust in e-commerce, this study will enable us to identify factors leading to successful e-commerce participation (adoption and integration). Drawing on theories such as trust in business relationships, inter-organizational relationship theories, transaction cost economics, and resource dependency theory, this paper develops a conceptual model to examine the impact of trading partner trust in e-commerce participation. The model is currently being tested through multiple in-depth case studies. The findings of the case studies are expected to increase the awareness of e-commerce adopters and implementers about the importance of trading partner trust in e-commerce participation

The Impacts of E-Business, E-Negotiations and Trust Building on E-Agribusiness Performance.

The topic of this paper is "The impacts of e-business, e-negotiation and trust building on e-agribusiness performance". The main purpose of this study are to investigate the factors affecting the e-business and e-agribusiness performance, to-investigate the influence of e-negotiations in improving e-agribusiness performance, to investigate the factor of trust that can influence the e-agribusiness performance and to determine the interaction of e-business, e-negotiation, and trust building in e-agribusiness performance. This study was conducted among fifty Master of Business Administration (MBA) students in University Utara Malaysia only. The finding obtained from this study indicated that there was a significant (2 tailed significant) relationship between independent variables (e-business, e-negotiation, and trust building) and dependent variable (e-agribusiness performance). In sum, the result obtained from this study indicated that four hypotheses tested in this study were accepted

From Control to Competition: Trust Institution in E-Business

Global economy has formed a huge challenge to the trust of traditional business. It’s a important problem of all enterprise how to build a effective trust institution in the new economy. The rapid development of E-business is bringing a turning point of trust institution. In traditional trust institution, trust means that principal controls the agent in fact. The evolution of trust institution was closely related to the development of technology because of control. This paper presents, with the innovation of technology and system, precondition of trust through the method of controlling has already been out of the existence. The development of E-business will have influence on the evolution of trust institution, Advantages of E-business can promote monitor from man-made to market-made, from control to competition. It will build an effectual trust institution

A Descriptive Content Analysis of Trust-Building Measures in B2B Electronic Marketplaces

Because business-to-business (B2B) electronic marketplaces (e-marketplaces) facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers, they strive to foster a trustworthy trading environment with a variety of trust-building measures. However, little research has been undertaken to explore trust-building measures used in B2B e-marketplaces, or to determine to what extent these measures are applied in B2B e-marketplaces and how they are applied. Based on reviews of the scholarly, trade, and professional literature on trust in electronic commerce, we identified 11 trust-building measures used to create trust in B2B e-marketplaces. Zucker\u27s trust production theory [1986] was applied to understand how these trust-building measures will enhance participants\u27 trust in buyers and sellers in B2B e-marketplaces or in B2B e-marketplace providers. A descriptive content analysis of 100 B2B e-marketplaces was conducted to survey the current usage of the 11 trust-building measures. Many of the trust-building measures were found to be widely used in the B2B e-marketplaces. However, although they were proven to be effective in building trust-related beliefs in online business environments, several institutional-based trust-building measures, such as escrow services, insurance and third-party assurance seals, are not widely used in B2B e-marketplaces

Evaluating e-commerce trust using fuzzy logic [article]

Trust is widely recognized as an essential factor for the continual development of business to customer electronic commerce (B2C EC). Many trust models have been developed, however, most are subjective and do not take into account the vagueness and ambiguity of EC trust and the customers’ intuitions and experience when conducting online transactions. In this article, we develop a fuzzy trust model using fuzzy reasoning to evaluate EC trust. This trust model is based on the information customers expect to find on an EC Website and is shown to increase customers trust towards online merchants. We argue that fuzzy logic is suitable for trust evaluation as it takes into account the uncertainties within e-commerce data and like human relationships; it is often expressed by linguistics terms rather then numerical values. The evaluation of the proposed model will be illustrated using two case studies and a comparison with two evaluation models was conducted to emphasise the importance of usin fuzzy logic