Determinants Of Consumer Trust

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Affiliate marketing is a prominent, contemporary type of performance-based Internet marketing whereby a company compensates affiliates for each customer referred through the affiliate's marketing efforts. It is regarded as one of the most promising customer acquisition tools in eTourism. The present study aims to identify the key variables affecting consumer trust in tourism-related affiliate websites. A mixed method approach was adopted to explore both the consumers' perspective, via focus-group interviews, and that of tourism affiliate practitioners via an online questionnaire. The main findings suggest that there is a distinction between pivotal determinants of trust and trust-enhancing factors. It is suggested that affiliates need to expose their competence and integrity to consumers. Affiliates that feature integrated booking engines need to reduce consumer's uncertainty by structural assurances and by providing background information on their websites.
Show abstract Hide abstract ABSTRACT: Purpose With the prevalence of the sharing economy phenomenon, there are an increasing number of hosts on Airbnb who manage more than one listing. Managing more listings likely makes hosts more seasoned in terms of serving guests, but it may undermine host quality due to hosts' constrained capability. This study examines the effects of host quality attributes and the number of listings per host on the reservation performance of these listings. Design/Methodology/Approach Using a large-scale but granular dataset of 5,805 active listings of 4,608 Airbnb hosts in Austin, Texas, this study estimates the effects of host attributes (host quality and listing quantity) on the performance of the hosts' Airbnb listings through a blend of regression models. Findings This study evidences that host quality attributes significantly influence listing performance through cue-based trust. In addition, this study finds a 'trade-off' between host quality and the quantity of their listings. As the number of listings managed by a host increases, the performance effects of host quality diminish. Research Implications The business implications of this study include the suggestion that sharing economy businesses such as Airbnb should sustain service quality through incentivizing hosts to improve host quality while balancing the quantity of listings managed. Originality/Value This study contributes to the literature through its meaningful theoretical extension in the sharing economy context and unique data-driven insights enabled by an analytical approach. It addresses the critical but less researched topic of host quality and listing quantity and generates important practical business and policy implications.. His research interests include hospitality operation, strategic management and financial management.
Trust is an important factor among all the stake holders associated with the AM value chain. There has been much academic interest on AM from different perspectives, such as the consumer's perspective (Gregori, Daniele and Altinay, 2013), affiliates perspective (Benedictova and Nevosad, 2008) and the merchant's or businesses' perspective (Fox and Wareham, 2012; Libai, Biyalogorski and Gerstner, 2003; Gregori, Daniele and Altinay, 2013). McKnight, Choudhury and Kacmar (2002) identify trust as the key factor between the consumer and the websites.
Show abstract Hide abstract ABSTRACT: affiliate marketing adidas (AM) has become an important and cost effective tool for e-commerce. There are numerous risks and vulnerabilities that are typically associated with AM. Though a well-planned AM model can greatly benefit the e-commerce strategies of an enterprise, a haphazardly implemented system can expose a business enterprise to major risks and vulnerabilities, which can lead to great financial losses through fraudulent activities. This research-in-progress has identified some of the risks and the technical background of those scenarios. The research will now move on to build a functional prototype of an AM network to design and test solutions to control the identified risks.
Show abstract Hide abstract ABSTRACT: Egypt is currently one of the leading nations especially in the Middle East region with a well-established e-commerce environment and advanced IT infrastructure, but rapid growth of e-commerce will soon occur in other nations with similar consumption patterns. This study tests a model of antecedents (consumer experience, propensity to trust, reputation, perceived website size, ease of use, perceived usefulness, and website quality) and consequences of consumers' trust toward online travel websites. Trust is expected to predict consumer attitude, perceived risk, and intention to purchase travel online. Data of 1,431 users of online travel websites were selected from the Supreme Council of Universities Database-Egypt (SCU) and analyzed through structural equation modeling. The findings show that all the aforementioned factors with the exception of consumer experience influence consumer trust toward online travel websites. Trust influences consumers' attitude, perceived risk, and intention to purchase travel online.