The Effect of Web Communities on Consumers’ Initial Trust in B2C e-Commerce Websites

Since the boom of 'Web 2.0' most e-retailers have started integrating diverse social media applications such as 'Facebook' and 'Blogging' as a possible marketing strategy to generate traffic and to boost consumer trust. However, our findings demonstrate that the use of social media applications requires a gestalt approach in order to be effective in boosting consumers' trust towards unfamiliar e-retailers. We find that the use of a social networking site such as 'Facebook' does not have any direct effect on consumers' initial trust towards unfamiliar e-retailers. Nevertheless, it is recommended to combine 'a corporate blog with facial photo of shop representative' with a social networking site such as 'Facebook' in order to boost perceptions of benevolence. We also find that the presence of 'a corporate blog' significantly increases perceived integrity, but adding a facial photo of a shop representative to the blog significantly diminishes the trustworthiness of the blog. Finally, our results show that trust beliefs have a significant and positive impact on consumers' purchase intentions, once again confirming the importance of trust for the e-commerce success.