Abstract
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's trust production theory [1986] was applied to understand how these trust-building measures will enhance participants' 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.
DOI
10.17705/1CAIS.01806
Recommended Citation
Son, J., Tu, L., & Benbasat, I. (2006). A Descriptive Content Analysis of Trust-Building Measures in B2B Electronic Marketplaces. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 18, pp-pp. https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.01806
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