Generational Differences in Online Trust Development: Millennials V. Baby Boomers

Online trust has become an important and emerging topic for marketers. Trust is crucial in order to build long-term relationships with customers and has shown to have a direct link on behavioral intent (Morgan and Hunt, 1994, Doney and Cannon, 1997). Building trust is especially difficult online since this medium does not offer the look, feel and interaction of a more traditional medium, thereby creating an uncertain environment for the shopper (Yoon, 2002). Bart et al. (2005) found that the factors that influence online trust “are significantly different for different Web site categories and customer groups.” Despite these findings, very little research has examined the potential variances in the drivers of online trust between generational cohorts. This lack of research is surprising considering the existence of literature that has established that generational cohorts value different variables when shopping (Schewe and Meredith, 2004). Therefore, a need remains to analyze the drivers of online trust across generational cohorts.