The differentiation and effectiveness of trust and trustworthiness in emarketing

Introduction

Nowadays, internet is becoming one of the main marketing platforms as a result of the development of technology. However it is a cheaper medium for organization to promote, sell and advertise their products or services, not every company is successful at e-marketing. One of the main reasons is about“trust and trustworthiness ”. Even though the concept between trust and trustworthiness is really similar and notional, it plays an important role of e-marketing.In this essay, will represent the differences and relationships between trust and trustworthiness. Moreover, here will include some examples that explain the effects and outcomes of applying trust and trustworthiness.

Literature Review

“Trust as the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party, based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party.” (Mayer et at, 1995, 712) Broadly speaking, trust is one person want to be vulnerable to the action of another party (trustee), even when trustee cannot be controlled or monitored. For example, customers want to save their money (vulnerable) in a bank (trustee) because of trust. According to a study of Barber (1983), trust has two critical components which are confident expectation and willingness to be vulnerable. Individuals trust a person or an organization as they have expectation of the persistence and fulfillment of moral social order, expectation of technically competent role performance as well as expectation that partners in interaction will carry out their fiduciary obligations and responsibilities. (Lewis and Weigert, 1985) Trust is an expectation set within particular contextual parameters and constraints. In fact, trust is not easy to be built especially though Internet. (Cheng and Lee, 2006) The perceived risk might be higher as the time lapse between product order and product delivery, consumer cannot physically check the quality of product before placing an order and consumers cannot fully monitor the safety and security of sending sensitive personal and financial information. Trust is very important to an organization that it could bring customers’ loyalty and brand value.

However, “trustworthiness perception is as an antecedent to trust” (Frazier et al, 2010) which are about people’s feeling before action or willingness of trust. The notion of interpersonal trust is built on the foundation of social exchanges that inform one’s perceptions of another’s trustworthiness. It could be individual to individual, consumer to organization and business to business. For e-marketing, therefore, the positive trustworthiness perception of individuals affects the outcomes of whether strong trust of an Internet organization or a person (trustee) was built. “Trustworthiness concerns the perceptions about a trustee’s characteristics that influence the extent to which a trustee make oneself vulnerable to the trustee.” (Frazier et al, 2010)Trustworthiness perceptions are crucial cognitive evaluations that individuals make in response to justice perceptions. Basically, trustworthiness will lead to trust. (Tomlinson and Mayer, 2009) According to the model of interpersonal trust (Mayer, Davis and Schoorman, 1995), trustworthiness is composed of three main components. They are ability, benevolence and integrity. These three- characteristics of the party might dominate the individuals’ assessment of an organization’s (trustee’s) trustworthiness.


(Figure: The model of interpersonal trust) (Mayer, Davis and Schoorman, 1995; Cheng and Lee, 2006)
Ability: The perceived skills, competencies and expertise that enable the trustee to be successful within a particular domain of interest.
Benevolence: The trustor’s belief that the trustee has the trusor’s best interest in mind and cares about the trustor.
Integrity: The trustor’s perception that trustee adheres to a set of principles that the trustor finds acceptable.
Instead of these three factors, the security and privacy people perceived affect their evaluation of a party’s trustworthiness and the trust of the party. (Cheng and Lee, 2006) Most consumers avoid to buying things online because they are not sure whether the security of payment process or the privacy of their payment details are safety protected or not. To reduce anxiety, uncertainty associated with transaction among relative strangers, customers tend to trust large online company as they have great word-of-mouth, financial background and acceptable contract. Customers also believe they give them the best offer or interest.

An organization’s trustworthiness perceived by customers is significant in e-marketing. It could affect a company (like a website) successful or not. If outcomes are positives, prior beliefs about trustworthiness will be reinforced and trust will either be maintained or strengthened. It outcomes are negative, some combination of ability benevolence, integrity will be reevaluated and possibly scaled back, leading to a lowered level of trust. Some examples of successful e-companies and companies without strong trust would be showed below.

Examples for positive and negative

E-Bay is the worldwide largest e-commerce company which is a good example to explain how to successfully establish trustworthiness for consumers. First of all,how does eBay deliver perceived ability to customers? eBay was established in 1995. So far it is the international largest e-commerce site and the company's market value is nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars. A number of large sites and enterprises around the world have a cooperative relationship with eBay. Therefore, customers for the ability of the company will have a considerable credibility.

Secondly, how does eBay deliver perceived benevolence to customers? eBay has a wide range of goods. Consumers can optionally select and purchase commodities on eBay. In addition, eBay has two most important systems which are text comments system and the reputation system. The two systems not only have a communication platform to the buyer and the seller, but also makes the transaction more ease and unaffected to the buyer and the seller. Then more customers join eBay, as consumers felt the eBay of human services.

Thirdly, how does eBay deliver perceived integrity to customers? Similarly, text comments system and the reputation system to the buyer and the seller offer the possibility of reference to the transaction. text comments that provide evidence of a seller’s responsibility or credibility while comments that provide evidence of irresponsibility or poor credibility serve. (Utz Sonja, Matzat Uwe, Snijders Chris, 2009)

More over, eBay uses PayPal for online payments. Now, PayPal has supported more than 57 regions, the number of more than 100 million registered users (February 14, 2006). PayPal is currently the worldwild largest online payment provider. Finally, eBay was nominated by the reliable privacy prise in 2009 . Due to eBay had built comprehensive privacy protection policies that achieves the positive corporate image. Consequently, it is really rational that why eBay is successful in the category of e-marketing.

On the other hand, there is an example which outcomes are negative. Amazon, one of the largest online retailers. Firstly, Amazon cannot supply perceived ability to consumers in some areas. For example,in China, there are some other online retailers such as Taobao, QQ Tencent and Eachent. Although these retailers have not the history as long as Amazon, they have better trust concept for the consumers than Amazon. Thus in China ,Amazon should let consumers think it can supply the services well as mainland online retailers.

Secondly, why some consumers can not feel perceived benevolence from Amazon in China? Like other online retailers, Amazon has communication with customers termly. However, it is not enough. Amazon just applied their previous experience into China market without building perceived benevolence. Consequently, Amazon still can not develop as strong as before in the china market.

Because of these two points, Amazon cannot develop rapidly in China. So if an organization wants to make consumers feel its trustworthiness then trust it, it must do very well on these five aspects – perceived ability, perceived benevolence, perceived integrity, perceived security and perceived privacy.

Conclusion

To sum up, the concept of “trust and trustworthiness”is reasonably important for e-companies and e-marketing. However “trust and trustworthiness”is very notional image, it interprets the further relationship between consumers and organisations. For instance, the benefits of this concept are not practical existing such as brand value,brand loyalty and credibility. Nevertheless, those benefits could maintain the long term relationship between consumer and organisation. Consequently, “trust and trustworthiness”in the category of e-marketing is the most significant issue that must be concerned immediately. Because the basic element of e-marketing is credibility which is built by the conception of trust. Furthermore, if trust and trustworthiness could be applied into a cycle system that might be much more effective for marketing,especially for e-marketing. For example, the concept of trustworthiness is offered invisibly by the seller, and it would result trust when the buyer receive, believe and purchase. Then the“trust”is built by the buyers who really buy the products or services. After that, the seller should reinforce the relation with buyer through trustworthiness. Finally, that might make a unbeatable and stable relationship between buyer and seller.

Reference

Barber,B (1983) The logic and linits of trust. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Cheng, M.K.C and Lee, K.O.M. (2006) “Understanding Consumer Trust in Internet Shopping: A Multidisciplinary Approach” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2006(February), 479-492

Frazier, M.L., Johnson, P.D., Gavin, M., Gooty, J. and Snow, B.D. (2010) “Organizational Justice, Trustworthiness, and Trust: A Multifoci Examination” Group & Organization Management, 35 (1),39-76

Lewis, J.D. and Weigert, A. (1985) Trust as a social reality. Social Forces, 63 (4), 967-985

Mayer, R.C., Davis, J.H. and Schoorman, F.D. (1995) An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20, 709-734

Tomlinson, E.C. and Mayer, R.C. (2009) “The role of Causal Attribution Dimensions in Trust Repair” Academy of Management Review, 34 (1), 85-104

On-line Reputation Systems: The Effects of Feedback Comments and Reactions on Building and Rebuilding Trust in On-line Auctions, Utz, Sonja; Matzat, Uwe; Snijders, Chris. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Spring2009, Vol. 13 Issue 3, p95-118