Building trust in m‐commerce: contributions from quality and satisfaction

Mobile commerce (m‐commerce) represents a new area of business opportunity. Past research has often focused on customer acceptance and its antecedents, rather than factors that build trust in m‐commerce. The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation of factors influencing customer trust towards vendors on the mobile internet.

M‐commerce relies on mobile technology and well‐maintained service quality. This paper has applied the service quality model (SERVQUAL) and technology acceptance model (TAM), coupled with proposed quality factors in relation to m‐commerce that, according to the literature, influence customer trust, to empirically test the formation of trust. The proposed model was empirically evaluated using online survey data from 212 experienced m‐commerce customers.

The results showed that despite customisation, brand image and satisfaction all directly affecting customer trust towards the vendor in m‐commerce, customisation and brand image equally had a stronger direct effect on trust formation. In addition, interactivity and responsiveness had no direct impact, but had an indirect impact via satisfaction on trust towards the vendor.

This paper contributes a theoretical understanding of factors that activate the development of trust towards the vendor. For vendors in general the results enable them to better develop customer trust in m‐commerce.

The paper verifies the effects of satisfaction and proposed quality factors on customer confidence in m‐commerce. Moreover, this article validates the determinants of satisfaction.