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

Trust in Electronic Commerce: A New Model for Building Online Trust in B2C

The rapid growth in the electronic commerce over the internet has fuelled predictions and speculations about what makes a business to consumer (B2C) web site effective. Increasing use of the World Wide Web as a B2C commercial tool raises interest in understanding the key issues in building relationships with customers on the internet. Trust is believed to be the key to these relationships. In this paper, an overall model has presented for building online trust in this context. This model outlines some of the key factors that are related in this area and suggests a framework based on these factors. With respect to the position and importance of the trust in online commerce, this model helps businesses in order to capture, sustain and construct long-term relationships with their consumers.               Keywords: E-Trust, Reverse engineering, Business-consumer web sites, online shopping, Web desig

The role of trust in the transition from traditional to electronic B2B relationships in agri-food chains

E-business adoption rates in the agri-food sector are rather low, despite the fact that technical barriers have been mostly overcome during the last years and a large number of sophisticated offers are available. However, concerns about trust seem to impede the development of electronic relationships in the agri-food chains as trust is of particular importance in any exchange of agri-food products along the value chain. Drawing on existing research, characteristics and dimensions of trust are initially identified both in traditional and in electronic B2B relationships and a typology of trust is proposed. The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of the implementation and use of trust elements that e-commerce offers dedicated to agri-food sector. This assessment will show the current situation and discuss gaps for further improvement with the objective to facilitate the uptake of e-commerce in agri-food chains

E-COMMERCE: A NEW BUSINESS MODEL FOR THE FOOD SUPPLY/DEMAND CHAIN

The use of electronic commerce for quality control and cost cutting efficiencies by the food and agricultural industries in the United States is the focus of this paper. The food industry engages in e-commerce through 1.) Internet shopping for consumers called business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce 2.) Business-to-business (B2B) Internet market discovery exchanges used by food suppliers at any point in the supply chain, and 3.) Business-to-business (B2B) relationships that reduce costs and increase efficiencies in the procurement, storage and delivery of food to retail stores or distribution centers. This third use of e-commerce is the most highly developed and widely adopted. It allows retailers to share information about consumers' purchases and preferences with food manufacturers and farmers and for tracking food products' characteristics, source, and movement from production to consumer. This circle of information allows high quality and consistent products to be consumed at lower prices. This paper is about the development of e-commerce in the food industry, the economic concepts and goals that it meets, and the changes it brings to the industry. E-commerce both fosters and demands vertical coordination. It favors consolidation of firms. It changes the business culture from one of adversarial relationships to one of cooperation and trust. It changes the historical supply chain into a supply/demand loop while it lowers the cost of food. Policy issues arise around monopoly power, privacy, a diminution of variety, and the demise of small, undercapitalized firms.Industrial Organization, Marketing,

A study on trust in E-commerce transaction by Malaysian consumer / Nor Farah Wahida Nasir and Norisma Shakilla Ismail

According to Lawrence (2010) the number of internet users around the world has been steadily growing and this growth the impetus and the opportunities for global commerce. The growing popularity of internet business gives rise to their services that considered as more attractive services in e-commerce sector. The growing of e-commerce business gives chance to entrepreneur to take an opportunity to expand their business through internet. It will also influence the rises of transaction through internet. The growing of global commerce will affect the growing of internet business and e-commerce transaction in developing countries. Malaysia also affected from growing of global commerce. According to Hoffman (1999) and Jarvenpaa (2000), there is overwhelming evidence that trust in the online environment is an important element of electronic commerce (EC)relationships. According to Mayer (1995) and McKnight (2002), the overall trust in using E-commerce transaction is influenced by consumer’s perception of risk to the Ecommerce transaction due the nature of supporting infrastructure. Usually, the consumer’s perception of risk caused by their intention toward to perceived privacy, perceived security and company reputation. Despite the fears some consumers have about making online purchases, online purchasing behavior continues to grow in volume, and more and more people seem to be taking the plunge and buying online (Green, 2002; Horrigan, 2002). As the proportion of people refuse to buy online continue to shrink, concern about privacy, trust, security maybe overshadowed by other concerns. Ahuja et al. (2003) found privacy and security concern to be the most common reason their respondents gave for not shopping online, but other reasons were not behind on the list

Integrating Trust and Risk Perceptions in Business to Consumer Electronic Commerce with Technology Acceptance Model

This paper develops and validates a theoretical extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The extended model aims to predict and explain consumers’ intentions to transact with an Internet-based business-to-consumer electronic commerce (B2C EC) system by integrating trust and risk perceptions with TAM. Trust is the foundation of commerce. Its influence on business relationships is even greater in the online environment, where there are no face-to-face interactions between the transacting parties. Under these conditions, consumers\u27 uncertainty on the transaction outcome would increase, and trust plays an important role in their decision to transact online. In this study, perceived risk is proposed to be a direct antecedent of intention to transact, and the various dimensions of trust are proposed to have a positive influence on perceived risk. Besides testing the model, the relative importance of the trust dimensions is also examined. The model was validated using data collected from 133 subjects. The results provided substantial support for most of the proposed hypotheses and showed the significance of the extended constructs. Several new insights on trust in B2C EC were found and their theoretical implications are discussed

THE INVESTIGATION OF THE FACTORS ASSOCIATING CONSUMERS’ TRUST IN E-COMMERCE ADOPTION

The success of electronic commerce significantly depends on providing security and privacy for its consumers’ sensitive personal information. Consumers’ lack of acceptance in electronic commerce adoption today is not merely due to the concerns on security and privacy of their personal information, but also lack of trust and reliability of web vendors. Consumers’ trust in online transactions is crucial for the continuous growth and development of electronic commerce. Since Business to Consumer (B2C) e-commerce requires the consumers to engage the technologies, the consumers face a variety of security risks. This study addressed the role of security, privacy and risk perceptions of consumers to shop online in order to establish a consensus among them. The findings provided reliability, factors analysis for the research variables and for each of the study’s research constructs, correlations as well as regression analyses for both non-online purchasers’ and online purchasers’ perspectives, and structural equation modeling (SEM) for overall model fit. The overall model was tested by AMOS 18.0 and the hypothesis, assumptions for SEM and descriptive statistics were analyzed by SPSS 12.0. The empirical results of the first study indicated that there were poor correlations existed between consumers’ perceived security and consumers’ trust as well as between consumers’ perceived privacy and consumers’ trust regarding e-commerce transactions. However, the construct of perceived privacy manifested itself primarily through perceived security and trustworthiness of web vendors. While trustworthiness of web vendors was a critical factor in explaining consumers’ trust to adopt ecommerce, it was important to pay attention to the consumers’ risk concerns on ecommerce transactions. It was found that economic incentives and institutional trust had no impact on consumers’ perceived risk. Findings from the second study indicated that perceived privacy was still to be the slight concern for consumers’ trust in e-commerce transactions, though poor vi i relationships or associations existed between perceived security and consumers’ trust, between trustworthiness of web vendors and consumers’ trust, and between perceived risk and consumers’ trust. The findings also showed that the construct of perceived privacy manifested itself primarily through perceived security and trustworthiness of web vendors. It was found that though economic incentives influenced a consumers’ perceived risk in online transactions, institutional trust had no impact on consumers’ perceived risk. Overall findings suggested that consumers’ perceived risk influenced their trust in e-commerce transactions, while the construct of perceived privacy manifested itself primarily through perceived security as well as trustworthiness of web vendors. In addition, though economic incentives had no impact on consumers’ perceived risk, institutional trust influenced a consumers’ perceived risk in online transactions. The findings also suggested that economic incentives and institutional trust had relationships or associations with consumers’ perceived privacy. The findings from this research showed that consumers’ perceived security and perceived privacy were not mainly concerned to their trust in e-commerce transactions though consumers’ perceived security and perceived privacy might slightly influence on the trustworthiness of web vendors in dealing with online store sites abroad. Furthermore, consumers’ perceptions on the trustworthiness of web vendors were also related to their perceived risks and the concern about privacy was also addressed to perceived risks. Index terms: Perceived security; perceived privacy; perceived risk; trust; consumers’ behaviour; SE

An Empirical Investigation of Virtual Communities and Trust

In the midst of promising perceived benefits, the electronic commerce (EC) environment entails greater challenges than those posed by conventional trade. In addition to privacy and security concerns, researchers and businesses alike are increasingly aware that the lack of trust for online vendors experienced by consumers constitutes a serious barrier to the widespread adoption and successful proliferation of EC. The process of building trust between consumers and vendors in the online environment thus becomes of paramount importance. This study seeks to examine how online vendors can develop trusting relationships with consumers through the establishment of virtual communities (VCs), fast becoming a notably successful online business model with relationship-enhancing and trust-building capabilities. By integrating multi-disciplinary theories, we propose and empirically validate a model, which proposes that increased levels of involvement in VCs enhances trust building among members and vendors, in turn encouraging greater EC participation in light of lower perceived risks and greater perceived benefits of online transactions. Results indicate that these relationships as proposed in the model are significant. There is empirical support that VCs constitute a successful business model of building trust, reducing perceived risks of purchase, improving customer relationships, reducing search costs, and retaining customers, leading us to conclude that increased involvement in VCs indeed has a positive effect on EC participation

Developing customer positive word-of-mouth and loyalty in mobile banking services by considering the role of trust and security

The number of people involved in electronic commerce is growing. Mobile banking, which was introduced by developing mobile technology, is a newly adopted technology in electronic commerce. Mobile banking is accepted as part of the daily lives of people, but focusing on merely adopting this technology is insufficient. Managers should go far beyond to increase the number of their customers. In addition, increasing the number of customers in an online business without considering several factors is difficult. Therefore, the importance of investigating the development of customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth (WOM) as two major concerns of online managers is remarkable. Trust and security are the two principal technical factors cited by most researchers in adopting mobile banking needs. Several studies have focused on the relationships between customers and banks through mobile technologies, but research that analyzes the formation of both concepts is scant. Hence, this paper investigates the relationship of security and trust for developing customer loyalty and positive WOM in mobile banking services. Data are collected from mobile banking users in Malaysia through questionnaires. The data are subsequently analyzed through SPSS and LISREL software. Results indicate a direct and positive relationship between security and trust in developing customer loyalty and positive WOM

Case Study : Acceptance and Adoption on E-Commerce Usage Among Micro Business Owner at Baazar Larut Malam Jalan Lee Sam in Seremban Negeri Sembilan

This study aims to determined the level of acceptance and adoption of e-commerce usage among micro business owner at baazar larut malam Jalan Lee Sam, Seremban Negeri Sembilan. Recent statistics show that total number of businesses employing web sites in Seremban is very small compared to others city in our beloved country Malaysia. Organizations are coming under increasing pressure to adopt electronic commerce as part of the need to be efficient and competitive and to play a greater role in driving the economy.With the new century,the continued prosperity of Malaysia can no longer be taken for granted.Qualitative research method,in the form of semi-structured interviews, was used to identify factors that are important and relevant to encourage willingness to adopt. Findings indicate that owner characteristics like lack of perceived benefits,lack of knowledge and skill,perceived lack of trust are significant inhibitors while environment characteristics like competitive pressure,government support and infrastructure are significant motivators of electronic commerce in Malaysia. The model forms a basis for further research as further quantitative study,in the form of survey, can be carried out to assess the model’s validity and provide further insights into the relationships among the factors