How to earn the trust of the users online ?

Type hostels in London on Google and you will get 305,000 offers to choose from. Which one to trust, which is trustworthy then? According to Hugo Burge (2008), vice-chairman of Cheapflights.co.uk one way to earn trust is through honesty and transparency. Generally speaking trust was defined by Bolton, Loebbecke and Ockenfels (2008) as the individual’s willingness to commit to do something where the cooperation of other people is crucial to the outcome. Trustworthiness is considered to involve the individual’s capacity to deliver to others, as they expect, and in the process, creates value for the group as a whole. The level of trust in an online environment can be affected by customer’s knowledge, perception, experience, attitude, reasoning and thinking. Different companies have put in place some level of security to protect the users of their websites, especially banks and companies that require customers to reveal their account details when transacting business online. This is to help reduce the level of uncertainty and encourage trust(Angriawan and Thakur 2008).
A general definition of trust is that of a ‘relationship between one or more persons, which has elements of openness and honesty, and a willingness to accept other[s] based on the opinion that the other party is both capable, and dependable. From a philosophical perspective, trust has to do with ethically and morally justifiable behavior (Buttner and Goritz 2008), but in economic terms trust is a rational calculation of costs and benefits (Buttner and Goritz 2008). In individual terms, trust is conceived as the extent to which an individual is willing to rely upon and make oneself vulnerable to another (Rotter, 1967; Frost et al.,1978 cited in Buttner and Goritz 2008). In an organizational context, trust is often a collective judgment that another group will not act opportunistically, is honest in negotiations, and makes a good faith effort to behave in accordance with commitments (Buttner and Goritz 2008). Despite the fact that trust and trustworthiness are the subjects of various disciplines most scholars agree that trust has three major constituents: (a) uncertainty about the outcomes of an interaction, (b) personal harm as a possible outcome of the interaction and (c) lack of influence on the outcomes (Petermann,1996 cited in Strander and Ramaswami 2008).
The results of a laboratory study conducted by Bolton, Loebbecke and Ockenfels (2008) on the impact of competition on trust and trustworthiness in online traditind shows that the key to reputation information creating trust, trustworthiness, and trade efficiency in the marketplace is buyer discrimination on the basis of the information. When given the choice of two sellers, it takes a large price break to convince the average buyer to do business with the seller of lesser reputation.
Online customers don’t have the opportunity of inspection the product bought or meeting the other party involved (Chanda and Debjani 2007) which mean that this kind of transaction will require a level of trust from both parties.Studies show that generating trustworthiness could be financially beneficial such as buyers reward sellers they can trust with price premiums (7-10%).
With a view to the concept of trust it can be said that there three levels of trust, the level of trust must rise to reach a level of optimal trust where the increased risk is manageable, acceptable and practical. At its basic level it is assumed that the trustor acts in a trusting manner in a situation of risk when there is little at stake (e.g. much money, very personal information) and there are recognized systems of reward and punishment. At the intermediate level, a trustor has some experience and familiarity with the web site, and so is in a situation of risk in which knowledge can be used to predicate behaviour and thus assign trust. Last in the development, which is the deepest level of trust the trustor expects that his or her interests will be respected by the web site and that he/she does not have to calculate the level of risk anymore (Winch and Joyce 2006).
The level of importance for factors affecting online sellers choice (Strander and
Ramaswami 2008)

The level of importance for trust factors affecting online seller choice (Strander and
Ramaswami 2008)

An interesting example of website from the world of football is that of Manchester United. How is it demonstrating its trustworthiness to online visitors:
1. Website loads quickly
2. Professional design and easy navigation.
3. Home page has good layout with browsing language choice.
4. The website’s privacy policies as well as terms of use are clearly marked.
5. Contact information is provided.
6. Online shopping for team memorabilia and collectibles is secured by VeriSign (a California-based company that manages two of the world’s 13 Internet root servers, a.root-servers.net and j.root-servers.net, considered national IT assets by the US federal government).
7. A consistency of ManuUnited corporate identity elements (colour, logo).
8. The presence of the guarantee text on the home page ‘the Official website for the world’s most popular team’.
9. Trustworthy partner logos and links are included in the website. Examples (Nike, AIG, Premier League).
10. Only the website administrators can upload information so the danger of a third party intervention is reduced.
11. Initial navigation page appears once for language selection, and then the website saves the users’ preferences automatically.

http://www.manutd.com/ is a trustworthy website. The football team website is not a high risk involvement product and it has a long tradition that makes a good reputation. Our recommendations are that they have to maintain this level and observe the different factors (e.g. forged Manchester United websites) that can affect visitors’ perceptions of trustworthiness and for a better understanding of the user’s approach to the trustworthiness of the website they should develop regular online surveys.




REFERENCES

Angriawan, A. and Thakur, R. (2008) 'A Parsimonious Model of the Antecedent and Consequences of Online Trust: An Uncertainty Perception.' Journal of Internet Commerce [online] 7, (1) 74-94. Available from < vid="1&hid=" sid="6bf1beee-39cf-41aa-80a1-4eb4941be11c%40sessionmgr104&bdata=" db="bth&AN="> [25th March 2009]

Bolton, G., Loebbecke, C., Ockenfels, A. (2008) ‘Does competition promote trust and trustworthiness in online trading? An experimental study.’ Journal of Management Information Systems [online] 25, (2) 145-169. Available from < vid="1&hid=" sid="6f6b25df-f484-469c-bb8c-6cba106acc76%40sessionmgr107&bdata=" db="bth&AN="> [24th March 2009]
Buttner, O., Goritz, A. (2008) ‘Perceived trustworthiness of online shops.’ Journal of Consumer Behaviour [online] 7, (1) 35-50. Available from < vid="1&hid=" sid="393cf486-e91b-4bd8-b9e9-9f630d803ec7%40sessionmgr103&bdata=" db="bth&AN="> [24th March 2009]

Chanda, C. and Debjani, C. (2008) 'Fuzzy Rule Base for Consumer Trusthworthiness in Internet Marketing: An Interactive Fuzzy Rule Classification Approach.' Intelligent Data Analysis [online] 11, (4) 339-353. Available from < vid="1&hid=" sid="09bf3d0b-8702-49a1-b283-70e74fbf7378%40sessionmgr107&bdata=" db="bth&AN="> [25th March 2009]

Hugo Burge (2008) ‘Build web loyalty by giving honest facts.’ Travel Trade Gazette

Strander, T., Ramaswami, S. (2008) ‘The Value of Seller Trustworthiness in C2C online markets.’ Communications of the ACM [online] 45, (12) 45-52. Available from [25th March 2009]

Winch, G. and Joyce, P. (2006) 'Exploring the Dynamics of Building, and Losing, Consumer Trust in B2c Ebusiness.' International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management [online] 34, (7) 541-555. Available from < vid="5&hid=" sid="81518cce-1bcf-4ec4-8bab-efbf5932144e%40sessionmgr2&bdata=" db="bth&AN="> [25th March 2009]