Trust is a set of beliefs that other people will fulfill their expected favorable commitments. From the perspective of the customer–vendor relationship, trust is the belief or expectation that the word or promise by the merchant can be relied on and the seller will not take advantage of the customer’s vulnerability (Geyskens, Steenkamp, Scheer,&Kumar, 1996). Recent business research has taken a comparable stand, defining trust as the expectation that other individuals or companies will behave ethically and dependably and will fulfill their expected commitments under conditions of vulnerability and interdependence (Gefen, 2000).
In the case of retail e-commerce, trust is particularly important. Customers cannot see the merchant, only the merchant’s Web site; they are unable to touch the merchandise, they can only see a representation; they cannot wander a store and speak with employees, they can only browse HTML pages, read FAQs, and send e-mail to customer service mailboxes.A customer at an online commerce site lacks concrete cues to comfortably assess the trustworthiness of the site and therefore must rely on new kinds of cues. The interpretation of these semiotic cues drives the development of customer expectations of the trustworthiness of the vendor.