Consumer trust under Customer to Customer (C2C) environment

Consumer trust under Customer to Customer (C2C) environment

The theory of Social Exchange states that the consumers under the C2C environment have a key role to play. This rule talks about the regulations and rules that control the exchange of resources among different people (Albasu & Nyameh, 2017). These resources include the intangible services and products ad their related values, the tangible products, and their economic value and the experience that they come with. Thus, word of mouth is a form of social exchange (Cropanzano et al., 2017). In word of mouth, what uses changed among people is the status of trust since high risks are resulting from uncertainties.

In the C2C environment, there is more risk that there is in the real world. Hence there is a specific definition of consumer trust in this environment. Aguirre et al. (2015) defined online trust as a type of attitude where the internet users expect their vulnerability not to be exposed and used in the online environment. Habibi & Hajati (2015) opined that in e-commerce trade, a trust includes the benevolence and competence if the trustees. Some other researchers propounded that there are three different dimensions in e-commerce consumer trust. They are integrity, benevolence, and trustees’ ability (Ribadu & Rahman, 2019; Hallikainen & Laukkanen, 2020; Maadi, Maadi & Javidnia, 2016). Now considering the definition above, this paper is based on the fact that under the C2C environment, consumer trust is the consumers’ view of the sellers’ integrity, benevolence, and ability, as well as the intentions and expectations of the consumers based on the aspects above. Other researchers suggest that consumer trust in the C2C environment is based on three aspects that include trust in the institution, feature, and process (Yoon & Occeña, 2015).

Agag & El-Masry (2016) tried to demonstrate that the prosperity to trust in consumers, word of mouth, and the guarantee of security, are factors that affect the formation of initial trust in consumers. Hassen, Turki & Gargouri (2016, June) came up with the multi-dimensional and process-oriented online transaction model. The model exposed the four categories that affect consumer trust and the risks in e-commerce entities: characteristics, experience, emotion, and cognition. This research will investigate the effect of the information from eWOM on consumer trust based on cognition. According to Yoon & Occeña (2015), consumer trust is the most important factor that affects transactions in e-commerce. Because of uncertainties of the sellers’ behaviors on the risks like the exposure of personal information of the consumers through hacker attacks, the consumers more often than not become hesitant to make online transactions. For this reason, trust has a significant role to play when it comes to helping consumers get through the uncertainties and risks. Nadeem (2015) stated that the variable which affects consumer trust is a common phenomenon and that online trust is only established when the services online positively affect the purchasing decisions of the people

The Influence Mechanism of eWOM on Purchase Decisions

Many researchers have tried to argue that eWOM information significantly affects the purchasing decisions of online consumers. Yan et al. (2016) stated that eWOM information could help mitigate the doubts by online consumers such as the perceived risks, lack of information, and asymmetry in information, to mention a few, so that they find it easy to make their purchase decisions. According to Hussain et al. (2017), eWOM information is important in that it helps it provides the consumers with enough information about the products due to the fact that 57% of the online consumers go to online reviews as their decision influencers. Stamolampros et al. (2019 found out that more than half of the young consumers buy things like games, movies, and CDs under the influence of the information from eWOM. Hussain et al. (2017) argued that as part of the information from eWOM, online reviews are part of the valuable information on the products based on the consumers’ experience. For this reason, the reviews have a significant influence on the purchasing decisions of consumers.

How does eWOM affect the purchasing decision of online consumers? Chou & Sawang (2015) investigated the effect of the recommendations on consumers’ purchasing decisions in a virtual community. In his research, three variables were used. Purchasing targets, recommendation features, and individual differences. The variables were used to derive the effect eWOM has on the consumers’ decisions. They hypothesized that the target is the moderator, and the trust is the mediator. In the study, he came into two conclusions. The first one was that trust was the mediator carriable, which was used to determine the effects of eWOM on the consumers’ purchasing decisions. The second conclusion was that the effect eWOM information had on the purchasing decisions varied across different online environments and products. Kim, Kandampully & Bilgihan (2018) added on the later conclusions in their subsequent researches. They experimented on the emulation decision-making to investigate the effect of eWOM on online consumers’ decision-making.

Empirical studies showed that most online consumers would look for and accept to use any related information to enhance their efficiency in searching for information. This is an indicator that the consumers are more often than not members of a high involvement state. Li & Karahanna (2015) conducted a study on the effect of the agents of recommendation on online consumers’ intent and purchasing decisions. They argued that familiarity and internalization had an immense influence on ability, integrity, and benevolent trusts. Therefore, it has an ultimate influence on cognition based and benevolence-based consumer preferences. On the flip side, the integrity, benevolent, and ability-based trusts impact the affect-based trust. Campus (2018) categorized the factors that affect the eWOM information’s influence into three different aspects. They are acceptors, messages, and sources.

The source is defined by credibility and expertise and ethics, identity, religion, and status. The message, on the other hand, encompasses the conclusions made, appeals, and opinions. Lastly, acceptor includes attributes, persuasiveness, involvement, and ideas (Campus, 2018). Nisar et al. (2020) described the power of eWOM information based on its credibility. This particular study discovered that five different aspects include trust in the positive impacts that will come with the eWOM information’s credibility. This risk is involved in this trust, how useful the websites are to the readers, how much the readers depend on the information from eWOM, and the relationship between the reader and the information publisher. In general, the researches that have been done on eWOM have reached two conclusions. The first conclusion is the effect of eWOM o the purchase intention of the consumers is based on three factors. The facts include the recipients’ attributes, information features, and the attributes of the information contributors. The second conclusion is that out of the information from eWOM that affects consumers’ purchasing decisions, trust is the most important one. With all this said, this paper will focus on the effects of eWOM information on consumers’ purchasing intentions.