Research On Antecedents Of Consumer Trust In B2C Electronic Commerce

Struggling through the explosion of internet commerce and hardship of electronic commerce bubble in 2000, the development of E-commerce in China has stepped into a new fast yet more stabilized period. However, new hidden obstacles rise as fast as e-commerce develops, and consumer trust becomes one of the major preventive problems. How to develop more or bring back the consumers trust becomes a crucial issue that is widely debated among business scholars and practitioners. This article aims to provide a variety of requirements related to consumer trust from different perspective, and sort out the relatively efficient way to improve the trust-relationship according to the requirements analysis.First, the article briefly lists out problems related to trust from different field studies, and then, summarizes the characteristics and similarities of consumer trust from related references, and finally, attempts to provide the definition for consumer trust in e-commerce. Based on all the above analysis, the goal of this article is to construct the trust business model under the B2C e-commerce environment in China. To achieve the goal, the article utilizes theory-induction method to analysis the key-factors from web-based business itself, web-sites, consumer and e-commerce environment, which affect consumer trust level. Also, sample survey based on college students is provided as experimental support for the thesis. At last, this article makes suggestions regarding management issues to all the e-commerce individuals from marketing perspectives.The empirical research results shows that antecedents which may influence consumer trust are reliability of electronic commerce technology, company brand and size, willingness to customize, and family income according to influence degree from great to light. Among the antecedents, reliability of electronic commerce technology, company brand and size are the two most important factors. Antecedents related to online company play greater role than those related to websites. The degree of trustworthiness depends on characters of online company in B2C electronic commerce. The results also show that due to the differences between domestic and overseas markets, conclusions in foreign literatures can not be used in domestic directly.