An Exploratory Approach to the Influence of Perceived Social Presence on Consumer Trust in a Website

Mouna Thabet ； Mustapha Zghal

《Journal of Internet and e-Business Studies》 2013卷 (2013/01) Pp. 1-20

https://doi.org/10.5171/2013.895661

並列摘要

Online trust has been widely discussed in the marketing research area and mainly in these two forms namely: trust toward internet technology and trust toward an online merchant. Nonetheless, very few studies have examined a very particular form of an online trust that is trust in a merchant website. Also, the literature examination revealed the importance of social presence in e-commerce. To this end, this research focuses on the one hand, to identify the dimensions of trust in a merchant website. On the other hand, it aims to explore different forms of perceived social presence on a website and determine their respective impacts in the formation of consumer trust toward a retail website. The results of a qualitative study in the form of semi-structured interviews, conducted with thirty individuals show that trust in a commercial website includes both two types of dimensions: trust beliefs and trust intentions. In addition, different manifestations of online social presence were identified namely: FAQ, forums, animations, instant messaging, website data, the number of registered on the website, human pictures, personalized welcome and virtual agents. Likewise, the results show that the online social presence is an antecedent of trust toward a retail website.

並列關鍵字

Trust toward a retail website ； online social presence ； electronic commerce ； content analysis