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Dr. Ecommerce,

I am a PhD candidate in the Cranfield University, U.K. The aim of my research study is to examine the role of trust in inter-firm partnerships between the agents (providers of electronic shopping mall for B2C/procurement site for B2B) and their clients (suppliers of products/services) in the electronic marketplace.

I understand that you are an expert in this field and I appreciate to have your valuable advice on the following.

1. Presumably there should be a formal contract between the parties, is trust an issue in their relationship because they will share the customers' data? Are there any other issues that should be looking into?

2. From the literature, I identified seven components of trust, namely
   • Commitment, such as willingness to customise, willingness
   • Competence
   • Communication includes transparency
   • Shared value includes inter-firm adaptation
   • Credibility e.g. reputation, size and market value/market share, reliability
   • Integrity e.g. fulfil promise, honesty, consistency, predictability, fairness, equity, against opportunism
   • Benevolence such as caring, empathy, helpfulness

   Are these seven components relevant in the virtual environment? Are there any other components that should be considered/included?

3. For the empirical test, I am thinking of doing a survey on the products/services suppliers that are clients of the electronic shopping mall/procurement sites. Where can I obtain a list of such suppliers so that I can select them randomly and send out the questionnaire?

I look forward to receiving your advice.

Regards.

Wallace

Dear Wallace:

I have seen little formal research in this area and I expect your results will be interesting and valuable.

In some respects you could argue that the trust between a virtual shopping mall and its clients is similar to that of a bricks and mortar shopping mall and its clients. However, a bricks and mortar shopping mall costs millions of Euro to develop and this alone indicates that the developers have a strong monetary commitment and demonstrates credibility, convincing shoppers that the mall will still be there the next day.

Allow me to go through your components of trust from the virtual point of view:

Commitment - I think the long term commitment expected of the agent and the client is that the agent provides long term promotion of the site, provides bandwidth to ensure that the site can sustain the traffic that it receives and maintains any services promised (such as credit card processing services, promotional activities, etc.)

Competence - Here it is an issue of having the technical competence to maintain a functioning, quality site.

Communication includes transparency - I think this is less of an issue in a virtual agent-client relationship; after all, the concern is more with performance than communication.

Shared value includes inter-firm adaptation - yes, the agent should be expected to grow with the client.

Credibility - this is a big issue; it is more difficult to gauge credibility in a virtual environment than it is in the real environment as I pointed out above. Clients will probably look to name recognition, client lists, length of operations, etc before trusting an agent.

Integrity - I believe this transcends issues of virtual reality and real reality. Integrity is a key element of trust in any relationship of any kind.

Benevolence - I think the key issue here is client service. Clients need to have trust that their agent will solve problems quickly. This particularly the case if the clients are not technically astute, as they will expect to have problems and will want a service provider who can solve those problems. Also, it is the less technically astute companies that are likely to require an agent rather than develop their own on-line shop solution.

I cannot think of any additional components of trust that are unique to the virtual world.

Regarding a survey, your best bet would be to use the search engines to locate on-line malls and procurement sites. You could then create a list and select from that for your questionnaire recipients.

Good luck with your research!

Dr.Ecommerce