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Electronic Commerce ( E Commerce )

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The development of new technological innovations, such as the Internet, has brought on changes for the market. The Internet offers a world-wide network, which connects millions of individuals and businesses and creates a global marketplace with huge business opportunities (E-business, eEurope, n.d). More and more companies have discovered the advantage of using the Internet as a communication tool to reach consumers at any place and at any time. This also enables consumers to search and gather information about products and services online. The word e-commerce refers to all transactions online. Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is the area in which we are to do our research and throughout this dissertation we will discuss consumer trust in …show more content…

Thus, there is a need for promoting trust and confidence on the Internet. For consumers, security and privacy issues are seen as barriers to shopping online (Windham & Orton, 2000). They want their identity and personal information to be confidential, due to fear of being exposed to online fraud (Petrovic et al., 2003). People are more willing to take risks with people or organizations which they trust. The potential risk in e- commerce is greater because of the anonymity, distance and lack of physical interactions (Cazier, Shao & St. Louis, 2006). Many elements of personal interaction that are used in the offline environment, for example, facial expression, gesture and body language, are lost or not applicable in an online environment (Grabner-Kräuter & Kaluscha, 2003). Many consumers appreciate the real shopping experience of touching things and trying items on. So, in order to understand why people do or do not engage in e- commerce activities, it is important to study online trust (Cazier et al., 2006).
Trust is an essential tool for a transaction to take place, both in an online and offline environment. In e-commerce, the Internet vendors as well as their websites can be trust building sources in themselves. So, it is important for companies to learn how to manage consumers’ trust in e-commerce. Although, building consumer trust on the Internet is a challenge for online vendors. For this

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