One of the most important issues facing Internet merchants is how to engender trust in a consumer when the consumer has had no prior interactions with the merchant either in traditional or Internet channels.
Many researchers of online consumer behavior showed that trust is a key antecedent affecting purchase intention. This is especially true to the Internet Stores that mainly sell fashion goods through their Web site because purchasing fashion goods from an Internet store involve much higher perceived performance risks compared to other product categories such as CDs, books, electronic goods, etc.
Key assumption of this study is that online consumers develop initial trust in a specific Internet store by evaluating the trusting cues of the Web site salient to each individual consumer.
This study focuses on how to create initial trust in an Internet store through its Web site alone defining initial trust as “ a consumer’s belief and expectation in an Internet store formed by the characteristics and trusting cues of Web site, and consumer’s propensity to trust, before making a first transaction and a consumer’s willingness to rely on the Information provided by seller and take action in circumstances where such action makes the consumer vulnerable to the seller ”
The purpose of this study is to propose practicable and effective strategies for acquiring and building initial trust from online consumers that could be used by the Internet store selling fashion goods online.
In order to do that, this study provides the definition of “ Online consumer ” and “Initial trust ”, suggest Trust Life Cycle model, identify various trusting cues by reviewing antecedent literatures on trust, establish research model based on the thirteen cues identified and try to find the most salient trusting cues affecting the development of initial trust by empirically testing the model.
The result shows that the factors significant in developing initial trust in an Internet fashion store are Web Site Design, Ease of Use, Option Variety, Perceived Service Level, Legal Infrastructure, Perceived Willingness, and Perceived Information Quality.
The result of this study could not be generalized in other product categories as online consumer behavior varies depending upon the characteristic of an Internet store and the product category that an Internet store deals with.
