Déterminants de la confiance du consommateur vis-à-vis d’un marchand Internet non familier : une approche par le rôle des tiers

Lack of trust has been identified as the major barrier to the growth of electronic commerce. Building trust is essential for the success of web vendors, especially less-known ones. If trust is a sine qua non condition of e-commerce development, then understanding its determinants should be a primary concern for web merchants. This research explores trust within the context of business-to-consumer e-commerce. More specifically, we focus on the role of third parties in building trust. Much recent research has been concerned with web merchant characteristics, web site characteristics or consumer’s characteristics. Third parties could be, however, key elements in trust development, particularly when the consumer is not familiar with the web merchant. The focus of this research is on three potential signals of a web merchant’s trustworthiness: trust seals (awarded by a third-party organization), testimonies from satisfied past buyers (selected by the web merchant and displayed on the web site) and partnership with a well-known web vendor. An experiment was set up to test the hypothesis. For this purpose, a fictive travel web site was created. Data collected on 304 consumers. Results show that: - Trust seals and testimonies have a positive impact on consumer’s trust - Internet perceived risk is a moderator of the impact of the presence of testimonies on consumer’s trust, - Trust is a determinant of the intention to buy on the web site, the intention to recommend the web site and the intention to visit the web site again.