BUILDING TRUST TO DEVELOP COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN E‐BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS

The intricacies of electronic commerce via the Internet and World Wide Web have provided marketers with a host of interesting challenges. From using the Internet and World Wide Web sites as communication and promotional tools to performing distribution functions, marketers are finding an entirely new world of consumer purchasing behavior. Issues such as store layout, traffic patterns, and salesperson interactions within a retail store are vastly different in E‐Business marketing. As in a direct‐marketing exchange, trust becomes a central issue in the negotiation process. Winning the customers' trust, and keeping their trust, is essential to E‐Business.