Instilling Trust Among China’s Online Customers On E-Commerce Platform

Abstract

In recent years, business-to-consumers (B2C) e-commerce platforms has developed rapidly in China triggered numerous attentions from the government, enterprises, consumers and even the academician. Due to the unpredictability nature of the e-commerce environment, trust has become significant factor in determining one’s competitive advantage. However, existing customer’s attitude and safety awareness are not optimistic towards the online shopping and e-commerce enterprises. Such lack of trust has caused the buyers and sellers to experience communication breakdown. Hence, it is very meaningful to investigate the factors which can enhance customer’s trust on B2C websites. In this study, a quantitative approach was applied to examine the relationship between the influencing factors and trust among 384 respondents from China. The results indicated that all the factors were positively correlated to consumer trust and product quality has the highest influence on customer trust. This is followed by website quality, company brand reputation, after-sales service and the customer attitude towards risk in the B2C e-commerce in China. Thus, it is expected that the B2C e-commerce will continuously improve their product and website quality in order to remain competitive in the market.