Trust – current thinking and future research

Purpose – The primary purpose of this article is to introduce the special issue on trust in marketing and the selected papers. However, it has a secondary objective of acting as a brief introduction to the concept of trust, of highlighting the scope and scale of research into the concept in a range of disciplines, and of stimulating more research in areas identified as still being under‐explored. Design/methodology/approach – This is a discursive paper based on analysis and synthesis of trust literature and of submissions to the special issue. Findings – This paper finds that despite a broad spectrum of disciplines that investigate trust, and despite this special issue in the area of marketing, there are still areas open for research into trust in marketing, for example the role of trust in a B2C context, the impact of indirect (referent) experience versus direct experience of levels of trust, and exploring the concept using more interpretivist or phenomenological approaches. Research limitations/implications – The historical synthesis provides researchers new to the field with some foundational literature. For those interested in current thoughts, the discussion provides a synthesis of the areas represented by the paper in this special issue. For those interested in new areas it offers suggestions as to some possibilities. Originality/value – The value of the paper lies in linking the special issue articles to areas of current interest and the identification of under‐researched areas of trust in a marketing context.