A Comparison of Online Trust Building Factors between Potential Customers and Repeat Customers

While vendors on the Internet may have enjoyed an increase in the number of clicks on their Web sites, they have also faced disappointments in converting these clicks into purchases. Lack of trust is identified as one of the greatest barriers inhibiting Internet transactions. Thus, it is essential to understand how trust is created and how it evolves in the Electronic Commerce (EC) context throughout a customer’s purchase experience with an Internet store. As the first step in studying the dynamics of online trust building, this research aims to compare online trust-building factors between potential customers and repeat customers. For this purpose, we classify trust in an Internet store into potential customer trust and repeat customer trust, depending on the customer’s purchase experience with the store. We find that trust building differs between potential customers and repeat customers in terms of antecedents. We also compare the effects of shared antecedents on trust between potential customers and repeat customers. We find that customer satisfaction has a stronger effect on trust building for repeat ∗ Soon Ang was the accepting senior editor for this paper. Harrison McKnight and Suzanne Rivard were reviewers for this paper. Kim, Xu, and Koh/A Comparison of Online Trust Building Factors Journal of the Association for Information Systems Vol. 5 No. 10, pp.392-420/October 2004 393 customers than other antecedents. We discuss the theoretical reasons for the differences and the implications of our research.