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The world has been experiencing an immense growth in e-commerce sales since the advent of digital payment systems and advancement of technological communications (Fatonah, Yulandari, & Wibowo, 2018; Ramcharran, 2013). According to Rahman (2018), e-commerce in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) area is booming as 71% of APAC consumers make online transactions. Consumers are offered a plethora of products online ranging from beauty and fashion items to furniture and furnishings (Sebastianelli, Tamimi, & Rajan, 2008). A large section of purchases consists of consumer electronics (CE). In 2019, annual worldwide revenue from online sale of CE products was estimated at US$337,754, with a user penetration rate of 23.7% (Statista, 2019).
Online purchasing involves more risks than offline purchasing because of its intangible nature (Beldad, De Jong, & Steehouder, 2010). The parties are invisible to each other, the products have a virtual existence, buyers have little, if any, information about the seller, and the online “shop” could be in any location (Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006; Shin, Chung, Oh, & Lee, 2013; Verhagen, Meents, & Tan, 2006). Online intermediaries facilitate an e-commercial transaction, reducing the risk by increasing buyers’ confidence and a seller’s marketing skills (Hong & Cho, 2011; Pavlou & Gefen, 2004; Verhagen, Meents, & Tan, 2006).
The success of any transaction involves the critical element of trust (Hong & Cho, 2011; D. J. Kim, Ferrin, & Rao, 2009). This concept is widely researched in e-commerce literature by a number of researchers (Flavián, Guinalíu, & Gurrea, 2006; Y. Kim & Kim, 2010; Matute, Polo-Redondo, & Utrillas, 2016; Stewart, 2003; Sun, 2010). Lewis and Weigert (1985) identifies trust as a central component of social reality; Stewart (2003) portrays that hypertext links and website associations influence consumer trust; Flavián et al. (2006) demonstrates that trust influences website loyalty. This loyalty may be generated through customer satisfaction (D. J. Kim et al., 2009). The role reciprocity in trust transfer and the moderating role of trust in generating e-WOM were discussed in some papers (Delgado-Márquez, Hurtado-Torres, & Aragón-Correa, 2012; Matute et al., 2016). This widely studied concept can be of several categories, two of which are pertinent to this research (Kim & Park, 2013; McAllister, 1995; Verhagen et al., 2006): (Gefen, Karahanna, & Straub, 2003; McKnight, Cummings, & Chervany, 1998)