Trust in E-commerce

Trust is just a simple word that is very important to man. Trusting someone and being trusted is something that you can’t be getting in an instance, in a blink of an eye. Trusting it has been a part to human personality that is given and gain by people who are worthy of that trust. The word trust is just a single expression other than with of the essence of importance to humanity. Wherever you go trust is as important as water. And in addition to that, as stated by (Heathfield, 2008) is that according to Dr. Duane C. Tway, Jr. in his 1993 dissertation, A Construct of Trust, "There exists today, no practical construct of Trust that allows us to design and implement organizational interventions to significantly increase trust levels between people. We all think we know what Trust is from our own experience, but we don't know much about how to improve it. Why? I believe it is because we have been taught to look at Trust as if it were a single entity."


Trust forms the foundation for effective communication, employee retention, and employee motivation and contribution of discretionary energy, the extra effort that people voluntarily invest in work (Heathfield, 2008). Trust, it is something that man are seeking to get to everyone. It is the feeling of to be trusted and to trust. It is a very serious possession to mankind. It is a possession that is so valuable. It is as precious as diamond that can not be bought. It is too hard to obtain. It is in the vein of the worth when you join a competition like an amazing race and win. Isn’t the winning price is a very worthy thing to achieve. It is the price that you have worked so hard for. It is something gained that you are worthy to be entrusted of something important. It is just similar to trust. To be able to gain the trust from someone is a very worthy achievement and you have to keep it, maintain it to last.

The importance of trust in mankind is so important. Its essence is as essential as our basic needs. It is like food, like clothing, and like shelter. Once you have it or gain it you will have the feeling of satisfaction for the reason that it is not easy to get hold of. Once you are entrusted by a person in its trust you have to keep that trust, maintain it. But, on the other hand, once this trust once is broke it would create a big problem. It is the same as living in hell. In addition to that, if ever you broke a person’s trust, it won’t do well to you. And also if you want to win it back would be hard. To illustrate, it just like the song by Parokya ni Edgar. In their song it states in comparison that trust and chocolate. It says that when a chocolate melts it would be hard to remold it into its original form just like the trust that once broke it is hard to gain it back.

Trust is a state of mind that is difficult or impossible to measure (Ciscoetl, 2008). Just looking to your surroundings trust is a vital thing to all. Any where you look trust is always there. Within your family trust is an important thing that gets a hold to keep the whole family together. Once this trust to each other is lost then the presence of love and peace in the family will fade away in grey. Fighting and hatred will reign in the family. Friendship, trust is also important to keep this friendship last. If the trust within friends is lost probably your best friend will be you greatest enemy.

No single person would want to lose the trust that they worked so hard for to obtain, right? In every aspect of our lives trust is very essential. Even in businesses, trust is also important in the success of an industry, in electronic commerce. In addition to that, in business it is important because it gives you the sense of security about a trusted party (Building E-Commerce Trust Applying Usability Principles). If trust does not exist then you cannot gain customers. But why is that so? (Bloomgarden, Trust: The Secret Weapon of Effective Business Leaders) states that trust plays an important role in a business’s corporate strategy because trust brings into vivid focus the characteristics that make today’s leaders successful, and the principles and techniques they use to earn the confidence of employees, colleagues, customers and the public.

In addition to that importance of trust is as stated in (E-Commerce Relationships, 2005) that there are wide range of benefits of trust in electronic commerce and those are lowering transaction costs (Gulati, 1995), promoting desirable behaviors, reducing the extent of formal contracts, and facilitating dispute resolutions (Ring & Van de Ven, 1994). Thus, a strong establishment of trust is very vital for the success of a business in particular to those who are engaged in electronic commerce.

According to (E-Commerce Relationship, 2005), it states that in electronic commerce trust has its two forms: the first form is trust in technology relating to institutional structural assurances and security mechanisms embedded in electronic commerce technologies and relationship trust referring to trading partners competent, predictability, reliability and benevolence in the electronic commerce relationship.

In addition to the statement stated above, as stated by (Doyle & Melanson, 2001; Hoffman et al., 1999; Jarvenpaa et al., 2000; Narayandas, Caravella & Deighton, 2002) that trust plays a significant role in electronic commerce because of the following reasons: anonymity, lack of control, lack of physical proximity, potential opportunism, and inefficiencies in web technology (E-Commerce Relationship, 2005).

Faith, Belief, and Hope are synonymous to the word trust. Gaining loyal customers is impossible if trust is not gained. To trust is to give hope. To trust is to have faith. To trust is to give hope. But in order for us to understand the importance of trust in electronic commerce is that to have knowledge in four areas. According to (Building e-Commerce Trust Applying Usability Principles) these areas that are needed to understand the importance of trust are Internet, electronic commerce, web design, electronic commerce trust and usability. For better understanding, in addition to that, it explains that Internet is the fastest growing mediums in the world and thus, the success f it makes it indispensable for companies to have an online presence. And with the rapid growth of Internet and as it gain popularity among the people around the globe it makes the distances between people shorter and makes the market competitions to be global.

In addition to that areas in the importance of trust to electronic commerce is because electronic commerce is an integral part of electronic business (or e-business) in which it involves buying and selling of goods and services by the use of electronic means. And because of this it gives an option to consumers to shop online (or cross shopping).

To gain the trust of your consumers is the web design. To define, web design is the process of developing a website which is in accordance to pre-set codes. Websites, consumers use electronic commerce websites because they wanted convenience and ease in its usage thus, when designing it websites should be simple, clear, easy and transparent. Other than that consumers wanted to feel assured that the information they submitted are safe. And in order for them feel that their information is secured, according to (Enge, 2007) that putting a HackerSafe service logo on your electronic commerce website assures the consumer (or business-to-business customer) that the information submitted in the electronic commerce website is protected from hackers.

In addition, according to the article “Building E-Commerce Trust Applying Usability Principles” is that there are factors that increase the level of trust in electronic commerce. And those are through the increase in experience with the Internet, increase of numbers of hour’s online, use the web for financial services, and lastly, significantly relying on electronic mail. But the most important to gain trust is the facilitating the buying process of customers as much as possible.

The trust has ad been a vital role business more specifically in electronic commerce because from the word of (Heathfield, 2008) says that from additional research by Tway and others shows that trust is the basis for much of the environment you want to create in your work place. And trust is the necessary precursor for the following: feeling able to rely upon a person, cooperating with and experiencing teamwork with a group, taking thoughtful risks, and experiencing believable communication.

The importance of trust has been significantly seen on how security measures are implemented. Having a strong security on your websites will invite consumers or give an impression that your electronic commerce website is worthy of their trust. But, on the other hand, there is an article (The Importance of Trust in the eCommerce Segment, 2007) that I read regarding the importance of trust in electronic commerce that the cause of purchase hesitation by the consumers to without national or well-known trusted brands is because of the lack of consumer confidence. It is because data security is always a threat, mediocre merchant performance consistently and overwhelming represents the greatest risk to online shoppers and so, for them to be able gain the trust of consumers to support their products and services through lowering of prices. To win the hearts of the consumers is through price. It is said that price is the most important factor in a buyer’s decision to make a purchase online or not. In the present day, we could see that there are lots of consumers who do their transactions electronically, mostly through the use of internet. Try visiting some of websites we could see that if you compare the prices or the total expenses doing a transaction through internet and through a manual process (or the normal process) you could come up with the conclusion that the consumers are assured that doing transaction online is much of its advantage on their part. Therefore, the implementation of strong security measures in your website will be a great help to you in order for you to gain your consumer’s trust. And in addition to that it is a vital thing that you implement security strictly, gain the trust of your consumers so that you business will keep running.

Trust is just a simple word. It is already on us. We could trust the people if you wanted to. It is a choice. In our everyday life trust is vital possession to us. It is gained and it could be given. The word trust is all around us. It is always with us. Where ever we go and whatever we do trust is there. It lives within us. We could see trust in our family, friends, and work and even in the success of a business. Trust plays an important role to everything we do; to each one of us.

References:

1. Gulati, R. (1995). "Does familiarity breed trust? The implications of repeated ties for contractual choice in alliances." Academy of Management Journal, (3Cool 1, 85-112
2. Ring, P.S. & Van de Ven, A.H. (1994). "Developing processes of cooperative inter-organizational relationships" Academy of Management Review, 19, 90-118.

3. E-Commerce Relationships: The Impact of Trust on Relationship Continuity. (2005). International Journal of Commerce and Management. March 1, 2005, from http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0198-23916/E-commerce-relationships-the-impact.html

4. Building E-CommerceTrust Applying Usability Principles. http://www.nicoladeproft.be/pages/ecommercetrust/conclusion.html

5. The Importance of Trust in the eCommerce Segment (2007). eCommerce Time. June 24, 2007 from http://www.ecommercenews.org/e-commerce-news-010/0274-062907-ecommerce-news.html

6. Ciscoetl (2008). "How Important is Trust, Really?" from http://ciscoetl.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/how-important-is-trust-really/

7. Doyle, T., & Melanson, J. (2001). "Business to business web exchanges: Easier hyped than done." Journal of Business Strategy, (22) 3, 10-13.

8. Hoffman, D.L., Novak, T.P., & Peralta, M. (1999). "Association for computing machinery." Communications of the ACM, 42, 80-85.

9. Narayandas, D., Caravella, M., & Deighton, J. (2002). "The impact of internet exchanges on B2B distribution." Journal of Academy of Marketing Science, (30) 4, 500-505.

10. Jarvenpaa, S.L., Tractinsky, N., & Vitale, M. (2000). "Consumer trust in an Internet store. Information Technology and Management", 1, 45-71.

11. Heathfield, Susan M. (2008). "Trust Rules: The Most Important Secret Abut Trust What is Trust?" New York Times from http://humanresources.about.com/od/workrelationships/a/trust_rules.htm

12. Bloomgarden, Kathy. "Trust: The Secret Weapon of Effective Business Leaders." from http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&ISBN=9780312349844&ourl=Trust%2FKathy-Bloomgarden#TABS

13. Enge, Eric (2007). "The Role of Trust in E-Commerce Sales." July 11, 2007, from http://searchenginewatch.com/3626363