Online trust building through third party trust transfer and third party protection

Abstract

The primary objective of this research is to develop an online trust building mechanism for SME (Small Medium Enterprise). Trust is very important in e-commerce. The nature of online shopping has a greater uncertainty than offline shopping. Seeing as there is an uncertainty that can produce risks, a prospective buyer’s trust is needed. A lot of people’s unwillingness to shop online is caused by their lack of trust toward e-commerce. E-commerce is said to be one of the ways for SME to compete with bigger companies. However, building trust requires immense time and cost. SME with limited resources may experience difficulties in building trust just with their own resources. Base on literature research that needs to be validated in next research, we found that trust can be built through trust transfer from the reputable and well-known trust-mark issuer, and third party protection such as escrow account service and credit card issuer.