Exploring The Effect of Store Characteristics and Interpersonal Trust On Purchase Intention in The Context of Online Social Media Marketing

Journal of Internet Commerce
ISSN: 1533-2861 (Print) 1533-287X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wico20
Exploring the Effect of Store Characteristics and

Interpersonal Trust on Purchase Intention in the
Context of Online Social Media Marketing
Nirankush Dutta & Anil Bhat
To cite this article: Nirankush Dutta & Anil Bhat (2016) Exploring the Effect of Store
Characteristics and Interpersonal Trust on Purchase Intention in the Context of
Online Social Media Marketing, Journal of Internet Commerce, 15:3, 239-273, DOI:
10.1080/15332861.2016.1191053
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15332861.2016.1191053
Published online: 27 Sep 2016.
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Download by: [University of California, San Diego] Date: 28 September 2016, At: 05:44
JOURNAL OF INTERNET COMMERCE
2016, VOL. 15, NO. 3, 239–273
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15332861.2016.1191053
Exploring the Effect of Store Characteristics and

Interpersonal Trust on Purchase Intention in the Context
of Online Social Media Marketing
Nirankush Dutta and Anil Bhat
Department of Management, Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, Rajasthan, India
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article explores the effect of store characteristics and Consumer perception; social
interpersonal trust on formation of attitude and intention to commerce; social media
purchase from online stores in the context of online social marketing; store
characteristics; trust
media marketing. Store Brand Knowledge, Store Reputation,
Perceived Store Size, and Perceived Store Risk have been
considered as antecedents of trust. Based on existing literature,
a conceptual model is proposed and empirically tested with a
sample (n ¼ 424) of online social media users with the help of
partial least square path modeling. This study is among the very
few empirical investigations done in the context of trust in
online social media marketing and focuses only on consumer-
perceived store-controlled factors as antecedents of trust.
Introduction
Researchers and marketing executives have claimed that Internet commerce
has reduced the advantage of large and reputed online stores, compared to
the new ones (Watson, Akselsen, and Pitt 1998), and has created a level
playing field. By providing free or low-cost accounts, option for efficient
marketing at reduced expenditure compared to click-based traditional paid
Internet marketing and avenue for fast communication with target consumers
through virtual communities, online social media marketing (OSMM) or
Social Commerce (s-commerce) has empowered even small online stores to
compete strongly against their bigger rivals (Gramigna 2015). Thus, stimulat-
ing the target segment with right messages in the appropriate online social
media (OSM) becomes critical in order to fulfill business goals of these
organizations. Undoubtedly, achieving trust of the consumers can act as a
vital factor in realizing these goals.
From personal life to business, trust plays a significant role while entering
into a transaction. Marketing scholars view trust as a variable which facilitates
relationships to evolve and change over time (Czepiel 1990). Because of
greater uncertainties associated with e-eommerce transactions compared to
CONTACT Nirankush Dutta nirankush.dutta@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in Department of Management, Birla
Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), New Academic Block, Vidya Vihar, Pilani, Rajasthan, India.
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
240 N. DUTTA AND A. BHAT
the traditional offline ones, trust becomes even more critical when consumers
enter into such online transactions. This can be attributed to consumers’ sense
of insecurity arising from their inability to interact face-to-face with the
online firm personnel (Bart et al. 2005) or physically check the products they
are willing to purchase (Grabner-Kräuter and Kaluscha 2003). Lack of con-
sumer trust is considered the most significant long-term barrier for realizing
the potential of Internet marketing to consumers (Keen 1997; Ganguly et al.
2010). Thus, trust is considered a critical factor in stimulating purchases over
the Internet (Jarvenpaa, Tractinsky, and Vitale 2000; Ba and Pavlou 2002;
Gefen, Karahanna, and Straub 2003; Gefen and Straub 2004; Kim, Xu, and
Koh 2004; Lim et al. 2006; Pavlou and Dimoka 2006; Pavlou and Fygenson
2006; Klein and Quelch 2015).
A vast number of e-retailers attempt to increase consumer trust by utilizing
different kinds of social media applications, which may enhance the feeling of
social presence by supporting two-way interactions between online shoppers
(Karimov and Brengman 2011) and increase trust in the store. Still, there is a
lack of research on the role of trust in the context of OSMM, especially in India.
The nascent stage (19%) of Internet penetration (EY 2015a), evolving cyber
laws and regulatory framework, coupled with a unique set of sensitivities and
psychological barriers set India as an interesting option to study this emerging
field of OSMM. India stands third in the world in terms of the available pool
of Internet users that can be targeted (EY 2015a). Powered by recent rapid
penetration of broadband and mobiles, and increasing spending power of
the middle-class segment, the Indian e-commerce sector is projected to cross
US $80 billion by 2020 and US $300 billion by 2030 (KPMG 2015). Coupled
with these trends, the fact that India is among the top three nations in the
world in terms of number of people using Facebook (EY 2015b) indicates
the potential of OSMM in India. Almost 28% of Indian population lie in
the age group of 15–29 years (Ministry of Home Affairs Government of India
2011). Since a large chunk of this age group comprises students and the tech-
savvy new generation, students of undergraduate and postgraduate levels in
highly reputed Indian technical institutes were chosen to empirically verify
the proposed conceptual model.
Significance and objective of research

Research on trust has focused on various perspectives, such as behavioral/
psychological (Colquitt, Scott, and LePine 2007), social/institutional
(Bachmann 2001; Grimen 2001), economic (Morgan and Hunt 1994),
managerial/organizational (Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman 1995; Mishra
1996; Jeffries and Reed 2000; Olson and Olson 2000; Urban, Sultan, and
Qualls 2000; Balasubramanian, Konana, and Menon 2003), and technological
(Shneiderman 2000).
JOURNAL OF INTERNET COMMERCE 241
Research has been conducted on trust in various online contexts, such as

online firms (Bhattacherjee 2002), information systems (Li, Hess, and
Valacich 2008; Al-Natour, Benbasat, and Cenfetelli 2011), e-governance
(Carter and Bélanger 2005; Bélanger and Carter 2008; Chan et al. 2010),
and online auction (Ba and Pavlou 2002). A lot of research has been carried
out to understand and analyze various aspects of trust related to e-commerce
(McKnight, Choudhury, and Kacmar 2002; Awad and Ragowsky 2006;
Everard and Galletta 2006; Kim, Ferrin, and Rao 2008, 2009; Lowry et al.
2008; Sia et al. 2009; Benlian, Titah, and Hess 2012). Some research has been
executed on trust in virtual communities (Brengman and Karimov 2012;
Laroche et al. 2012) (Refer to Table 1 for a brief overview of selected literature
on e-commerce and virtual community).
A few research papers have identified the role of trust in OSM (Dwyer,
Hiltz, and Passerini 2007; Valenzuela, Park, and Kee 2009; Fuchs 2011), while
others have discussed trust in the context of s-commerce (Bansal and Chen
2011; Gorner, Zhang, and Cohen 2013; Shin 2013; Esmaeili et al. 2015).
Few papers have attempted to empirically prove the relationship between
antecedents of trust and the outcomes in OSMM (Hsiao et al. 2010; Kim
and Noh 2012; Pentina, Zhang, and Basmanova 2013; Talat, Azar, and Yousaf
2013; Chow and Shi 2014) (see Table 2).
The lack of empirical research papers focused on OSMM may be because of
two reasons: (1) OSMM is comparatively new, and most companies still do
not use OSMM to boost their sales directly; and (2) OSMM is perceived as
another version of e-commerce. Most online social networks (OSN) still do
not have inbuilt direct purchase option. Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Pin-
terest have been trying to incorporate “Buy” buttons in their networking sites, but
none has made the option available globally (Bell 2015; Ha 2015; Matney 2015;
Yamartino 2015). Looking at the speed at which companies have started utilizing
OSM for marketing purposes, it is inevitable that direct purchase options will be
available to more consumers in prominent OSMs sooner rather than later. Never-
theless, some researchers have also suggested that consumers who trust
e-commerce may not necessarily trust s-commerce (Bansal and Chen 2011).
Moreover, OSMM differs from earlier e-commerce-based marketing in two
ways. Firstly, boosted by fast and free communication mechanism, the influ-
ence of fellow consumers is much higher in OSM. Secondly, there are inherent
design restrictions placed on the pages of companies maintained in different
OSMs (e.g., dimension of the profile picture and banner of the page, dimen-
sion of images shared, capability to share audio/video, variations in the text
font). Online stores which engage in OSMM must design their pages differ-
ently than their websites for favorable perception of the size of the store
and transaction risks. Moreover, managing reputation, brand awareness,
and brand image is also more difficult in the age of OSMM. On the other
hand, because of more influence of other general members, there is a high
Table 1. Selected empirical papers on trust in different online contexts.

Research study Context Findings
Kim et al. (2008) E-commerce Internet consumers’ trust and perceived risk have strong
impacts on their purchasing decisions. Consumer
disposition to trust, reputation, privacy concerns,
security concerns, the information quality of the
website, and the company’s reputation have strong
effects on Internet consumers’ trust in the website.
Awad and E-commerce Effect of trust on intention to shop online is stronger for
Ragowsky (2006) women than for men. Quality of online word of mouth
affects online trust differently across gender.
Everard and Galletta E-commerce Presentation flaws (e.g., errors, poor style, and
(2006) incompleteness) are inversely related to the users’
level of perceived quality of an online store. Perceived
quality of the online store’s website is directly related
to users’ trust in the store and, ultimately, to users’
intentions to purchase from the store.
Kim et al. (2009) E-commerce Trust directly and indirectly affects a consumer’s
purchase decision in combination with perceived risk
and perceived benefit, and also that trust has a longer
term impact on consumer e-loyalty through
satisfaction.
Lowry et al. (2008) E-commerce Branding alliances and website quality increase
likelihood of initial consumer trust.
McKnight et al. E-commerce Structural assurance (perception of safety of web
(2002) environment), perceived web vendor reputation, and
perceived website quality significantly influence
consumer’s initial trusting belief and trusting intention
in the web vendor. Perceived Internet risk negatively
affects consumer intentions to transact with a web-
based vendor
Sia et al. (2009) E-commerce Impact of peer customer endorsements on trust
perceptions was stronger for subjects in collectivistic
culture, and portal affiliation was effective in
individualistic culture. Highlights the need to consider
cultural differences when identifying the mix of web
strategies to employ in Internet store websites.
Benlian et al. (2012) E-commerce (Product Investigates the differential effects of provider
recommendation) recommendations (PRs) and consumer reviews (CRs)
on the instrumental, affective, and trusting
dimensions of consumer beliefs. Users of PRs express
significantly higher perceived usefulness and
perceived ease of use than users of CRs, while users of
CRs express higher trusting beliefs and perceived
affective quality than users of PRs. CRs were found to
elicit higher perceived usefulness, trusting beliefs, and
perceived affective quality for experience goods, while
PRs were found to unfold higher effects on all of these
variables for search goods.
Brengman and Virtual community Integration of social network applications affects
Karimov (2012) perceived benevolence and perceived integrity of an
unfamiliar e-vendor. This significantly affects purchase
intention.
Laroche et al. (2012) Virtual community Brand communities established on social media have
positive effects on shared consciousness, shared rituals
and traditions, and obligations to society. These in
turn positively affects value creation practices (e.g.,
social networking, community engagement,
impressions management, and brand use). Brand trust
has a full mediating role in converting value creation
practices into brand loyalty.
Table 2. Selected research papers on trust in OSM and OSMM (or s-Commerce).
Type of paper
(Conceptual/ Sample size and
Category Research study Empirical) Variables considered methodology Findings and comments
Empirical Dwyer, Hiltz, and Empirical Online privacy concern, Trust in social 117; ANOVA Online relationships can develop in sites
research Passerini (2007) networking sites, Trust in other members where perceived trust and perceived
papers on of the social networking site, Willingness safeguards are weak.
trust in OSM to share information and Development
of new relationship
Fogel and Empirical Risk taking attitude, Trust, Privacy concern 205; ANOVA / Individuals with profiles on social networking
Nehmad (2009) Mann-Whitney websites have greater risk taking attitudes
than those who do not; greater risk taking
attitudes exist among men than women.
General privacy concerns and identity
information disclosure concerns are of
greater concern to women than men.
Greater percentages of men than women
display their phone numbers and home
addresses on social networking websites.
Valenzuela, Park, Empirical Life Satisfaction, Social Trust, Civic and 2603; Hierarchical Positive relationship was found between
and Kee (2009) Political Participation Multivariate intensity of Facebook use and students’ life
Ordinal Least satisfaction, social trust, civic engagement
Square and political participation.
Regression
Research papers Bansal and Chen Empirical Privacy concern (Collection of user 270; Median Split Users trust e-Commerce sites more than
on trust in (2011) information, usage of user’s information and Anova s-Commerce ones. All four components of
OSMM/ without approval, unauthorized access to privacy concern and security concern
s-commerce user’s information, errors in users’ impact users’ trust in e-vendors. Comment:
information) and security concern The study reveals that improper access of
users’ information increases trust in the
e-commerce site of the vendor, which is
counterintuitive and no explanation of this
phenomenon is provided.
(Continued)
243
Table 2. Continued.
244
Type of paper
(Conceptual/ Sample size and
Category Research study Empirical) Variables considered methodology Findings and comments
Pee (2012) Conceptual (Pilot Information Quality, Source credibility, 100; Partial Least Majority influence has a stronger effect on
study included) Majority influence, User’s trust of Square trust than source credibility. Users are likely
information on OSM to rely on information quality as well as
source credibility and majority influence in
case of high personal involvement.
Gorner, Zhang, Empirical Social network of advisors Simulation / Proposed three ways to improve the number
and Cohen Experiment of trust modeling of agents, two relating to
(2013) the limit of the advisor-network size by
either setting a maximum size for a buyer’s
advisor network or setting a minimum
trustworthiness threshold for agents to be
accepted into that advisor network, and a
third which using an advisor referral system
in combination with one of the first two
network-limiting techniques.
Shin (2013) Empirical Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Enjoyment, 329 (final survey); Subjective norm is a key behavioral
Attitude, Behavioral Intention, Subjective Interview, antecedent to use s-commerce. Moderating
Norm, Perceived Trust, Perceived Social Focus Group, and mediating effects of subjective norm
Support and Behavior Survey on relationships among variables were
found to be significant.
Esmaeili et al. Conceptual — 7 research papers 18 antecedents of trust in s-commerce are
(2015) identified from earlier research work. Five
of these factors have been identified in in
more than one earlier research studies
(Familiarity with other members, Trust
propensity, Word-of-mouth referrals,
information quality and size of the firm).
Chow and Shi Empirical Information-Based (Consumer trust in the 375; Structural Both information-based and identification-
(2014) information delivered in the social Equation based factors significantly influence
commerce website); Identification-Based company trust. The final outcome
(Trust in the members of a social Modelling considered in the research paper is e-WOM
commerce website) (Smart PLS 2.0). intention.
Kim and Noh Empirical Reputation, Size, Information Quality and 466; Structural Significant effect of all antecedents is
(2012) Communication Equation observed on consumers’ trust. The final
Modelling outcome Empirical considered is Trust
(Smart PLS 2.0). Performance. Comment: The factors
considered for measuring Trust
Performance is not clear.
Talat, Azar, and Empirical Perceived value (perceived usefulness), Risk 100; Multiple All three antecedents were found to be
Yousaf (2013) and Social Networking Focus (ease of Regression significant for consumers’ trust. Comment:
use, user control and system complexity) Equation, SPSS Online stores do not have complete control
15.0 on Social Networking Focus of users. The
sample size is also small.
Hsiao et al. (2010) Empirical Perceived ability, Perceived benevolence / 1219; Structural All four factors were found to be significant
integrity, Perceived critical mass and Equation for trust in product recommendation.
trust in a website Modelling, Comment: This research paper focuses on
AMOS 7.0 trust in product recommendation, which
may not be controlled by an online store.
Pentina, Zhang, Empirical Perceived self-OSN personality match, Trust 184; Partial Least Influence of trust in the OSN is significant
and Basmanova in OSN, Patronage Intention toward the Square towards business hosted on it. Similarity in
(2013) OSN, Patronage Intention toward the (SmartPLS 2.0) personality traits between OSN users and
Brands on OSN OSN brand is important in engendering
trust in Twitter. Comment: This study
considers only Twitter as the OSN
245
chance of users of OSM perceiving these characteristics in a different light

than consumers who directly interact with websites of online stores.
The antecedents discussed in the earlier research papers on trust in
s-commerce have been generally taken with different aspects (e.g.,
characteristics of store, consumers’ online community, message properties,
consumer characteristics), rather than being focused on a single dimension.
Extant literature suggests that the relation between trust and behavioral
outcome may vary across cultures (Strong and Weber 1998; Pavlou and Chai
2002; Lim et al. 2004; Gefen et al. 2005; Gefen and Heart 2006; Cyr 2008; Kim
2008; Turel, Yuan, and Connelly 2008; Vance et al. 2008), in accordance with
Hofstede (1980), who envisioned trust as one of the basic differentiating char-
acteristics among societies. Although trust has been studied from different
perspectives in online context in India (Dash and Saji 2006; Ganguly et al.
2010; Sahney, Ghosh, and Shrivastava 2013), the authors are not aware of
any empirical research on trust in OSMM conducted in India. This study
therefore responds to the call for attention to cultural sensitivities in online
research, as they are more important in an online shopping context than
offline context (Shankar, Urban, and Sultan 2002).
The present research study draws from earlier research work on trust in
OSMM context. It investigates the effect of only those perceived variables that
are related to and under sufficient control of an online store. This has been
chosen as the focus area of present research keeping in mind earlier findings
on e-commerce in Ireland, which substantiated that consumers’ perception of
vendor trustworthiness is the result of specific factors that are possible for
vendors to manage (Connolly and Bannister 2007). Thus, a conceptual model
has been proposed and empirically tested with the help of 424 users of OSM,
in order to investigate the role of a few perceived store characteristics (brand
knowledge, store reputation, perceived store size, and perceived store risk) and
trust on formation of attitude and intention to purchase from the store. The med-
iating role of attitude on the relationship between trust and purchase has also
been examined, along with the moderating effect of gender. The effects of these
antecedents have been discussed with particular reference to gender and culture.
The results indicate that store brand knowledge, store reputation, and
perceived store risk are significantly related with trust in the online store.
Trust and attitude both are significant factors for forming purchase intention
for the store. Attitude partially mediates the role of trust on purchase inten-
tion. Gender plays a significantly different role in formation of trust, attitude,
and purchase intention.
Structure of the article

In the next section, existing literature on trust and various store characteristics
are reviewed before presentation of a conceptual model. Later, the methodology
of the research is discussed in detail. The subsequent section describes the

results, and the final section elaborates upon the research findings, along with
limitations of the present study and scope for further research.
For the sake of brevity, “online store” is used throughout the text to
indicate stores which maintain their profiles on one or the other OSM.
Consumers’ disposition to trust or trust toward the intermediaries operating
behind the online store is not discussed in the present scope of this article.
Moreover, antecedents of trust related to the institutional framework (e.g.,
structure of the social networking sites) are kept out of the purview of the
present article.
Literature review
Store brand knowledge
Brand Knowledge is composed of Brand Awareness and Brand Image (Keller
1993). Brand Awareness comprises Brand Recognition and Brand Recall,
while Brand Image is defined by the set of positive or negative associations
the customer has with the brand.
Based on surveys of Korean college students, an earlier study found that
awareness was significantly related to trust (Yoon 2002), as a certain level
of awareness is necessary to bring the consumer to the verge of deciding on
trustworthiness of the store. It can be easily argued that store awareness is
a necessary but not a sufficient condition for evoking trust. A report by
Greenfield Online (1998) also found that 71% of the respondents to a survey
believed awareness to be an important antecedent of trust.
Awareness of a store does not directly translate into an intention to pur-
chase from the store. Still, awareness can influence perception of risk associa-
ted with the online store and influence its perceived trustworthiness, which in
turn may lead to formation of positive attitude toward the store and intention
to engage in e-commerce activities, especially purchase from it (Gurung, Luo,
and Raja 2008). Brand awareness has been found to directly influence initial
trusting belief in the brand (Lowry et al. 2008). Brand Awareness results in
increased familiarity and reduction in the perception of risk, and is mani-
fested through improved Brand Image. This results in increased Trust. This
forms the basis of the first hypothesis.
Hypothesis 1: High level of Brand Knowledge of the online store positively affects
trust in it.
Store reputation
Reputation is defined as the extent to which buyers believe an online store to
be honest and concerned about its customers (Doney and Cannon 1997).
Building positive reputation is a difficult, time-consuming, and expensive

process, requiring a great deal of consistent relationship-enhancing behavior
on the part of the store toward its customers. It can be easily overweighed by a
few missteps of the store, resulting in the store being perceived as unfair or
dishonest. A good reputation signals that the store did not resort to opportun-
ism for short-term gains at the expense of its customers in the past (Telser
1980; Dasgupta 1988).
Earlier researchers have argued that reputation is transferable among firms
(Ganesan 1994) and individuals (Koufaris and Hampton-Sosa 2004). It has
also been found that reputation is significantly related to website trust (Yoon
2002) and acts as an antecedent to online trust (McKnight et al. 2002). OSMs
have played a great role in building the reputation of stores, as a high chance
of interaction among the consumers makes short-term opportunism costlier
for an online store. Hence, a reputed online store has better probability of
being perceived as trustworthy.
Hypothesis 2: High reputation of an online store positively affects trust in it.
Perceived store size

Store size has often been cited as one of the most influencing factors evoking
trust (Doney and Cannon 1997). More than the actual size, the perceived size
of an online store is important for trust (Jarvenpaa et al. 2000). Customers
perceive a large-sized organization to be trustworthy (Pavlou 2003; Koufaris
and Hampton-Sosa 2004) for two reasons: (1) It has invested a lot of capital
for scaling up to the size, and (2) a good number of consumers have already
trusted it, indicating its expertise and necessary support systems (Hsu 2008).
Large size also implies that the store should have considerable control over its
suppliers to ensure availability of quality products at reasonable price in sti-
pulated timeframe. Also, it can compensate the buyers in case of loss arising
from product failure or faulty transaction.
A few earlier studies have discussed the effect of size on trust in online con-
text, but have dropped off this construct from the final analysis because of
issues with data set (Koufaris and Hampton-Sosa 2004) or on the basis of
researcher’s judgment that it cannot be properly measured by the customers
of an online store (Hsu 2008). Since customers build on their perception of
the size of an online store from various cues like variety of product categories,
number of products in each category, number of customers who might have
already purchased, declaration of the store in its online portal or OSM page,
and number of people talking about the store in OSM, the researchers of this
article believe that there is a good chance of perceived store size influencing
the trust consumers place in it.
Hypothesis 3: The perceived size of an online store positively affects trust in it.
Perceived store risk

Risk perception refers to the “trustor’s belief about likelihoods of gains and
losses outside of considerations that involve the relationships with the
particular trustee” (Mayer et al. 1995, 726). Trust is interwoven with risk
(McAllister 1995) and is inversely proportional to trustworthiness (Ganesan
1994). The question of trust does not arise in the absence of risk (Mayer et
al. 1995). Earlier research findings suggest that reduction in perceived risk acts
as a mechanism to increase trust (Resnick and Varian 1997; Dieberger et al.
2000; Resnick et al. 2000). Researchers have also found that risk influenced
attitude toward shopping on the Internet, although it might not affect
intention (Jarvenpaa and Todd 1997). Consumer’s fear about marketing with
social media have been found to play a statistically significant role in the
formation of attitude toward marketing with social media (Akar and
Topçu 2011).
Researchers have been divided in their opinion about whether trust is an
antecedent to risk perception (Jarvenpaa et al. 2000; Pavlou 2003) or if it is
the other way around (Corritore, Kracher, and Wiedenbeck 2003). Some
have conceptualized perceived risk as a moderator in studies involving trust
and Internet shopping (Al-Nasser et al. 2014), while others have explored
the relationship taking risk perception as a mediator between trust and
intention (Kim et al. 2008). Arguably, risk can be present at multiple stages
of online purchase, but its effect is the most pronounced before trust is built
in the seller. Risk perception can be formed by user comments, store’s reply
to user queries and complaints, and group discussions on various social
media sites. Thus, in this article, perceived risk is assumed as an antecedent
of trust.
Hypothesis 4: The absence of perceived risk involved in an online transaction
positively affects trust in it.
Trust and its effects

Trust is primarily characterized by expectations in the face of uncertainty, vul-
nerability, and dependence (Ganesan 1994). It is defined as the willingness of a
trustor to be vulnerable to the actions of a trustee based on the expectation that
the trustee will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespec-
tive of the ability to monitor or control the trustee (Mayer et al. 1995). It acts as
a useful means to overcome complex technological, organizational, or inter-
personal interactions characterized by loss of control (Gefen et al. 2003). Trust
affects the individual consumer (Schurr and Ozanne 1985) as well as the indus-
trial buyers, irrespective of the buyers’ switching costs (Chow and Holden
1997). An interdisciplinary model of high level trust concepts developed by
McKnight and Chervany categorized trust in to (a) dispositional, (b)
institutional, and (c) interpersonal constructs, where dispositional trust is most

appropriately explained from psychological and economical viewpoints, insti-
tutional trust from sociological perspectives, and interpersonal trust from the
viewpoint of social psychology and economics disciplines (McKnight and
Chervany 2002). Tan and Sutherland (2004) conceptualized online trust as a
multidimensional construct consisting of all three aspects.
The present article focuses on interpersonal trust, which is a psychological
state or orientation of an actor (the trustor) comprising the intention to
accept vulnerability based on positive expectations of the intentions or beha-
viors of a specific partner (the trustee) with whom the actor is in some way
interdependent (i.e., the trustor needs the trustee’s cooperation to attain
valued outcomes or resources) (Rousseau et al. 1998). Interpersonal trust
can be placed on an individual (McKnight et al. 2002) or a business organi-
zation by the trustor (consumer in the context of this study).
A consumer’s belief in the ability, integrity, and benevolence of the online
store gives rise to interpersonal trust in it (McKnight, Cummings, and
Chervany 1998; Gefen and Straub 2004). Trust in an online store may be
conceptualized as a general mechanism through which the focal independent
variables under consideration are able to positively influence purchase inten-
tion (Ganguly et al. 2010). Besides one-to-one interaction with the salesman,
various cues assist consumers in formation of trust in a store (Doney and
Cannon 1997). These cues become different in the context of online stores.
In online transactions, the salesman is either absent or peripheral to the sell-
ing and buying process (Lohse and Spiller 1998), the customer is generally at a
huge distance from the seller, and the customer cannot physically check the
products (Yoon 2002). In such cases, the merchant organization becomes
the primary target of consumer’s trust (Jarvenpaa et al. 2000). Consumers
depend on the impersonal electronic store front to act on behalf of the indi-
vidual seller (Culnan and Armstrong 1999). These cues include the size of the
store as perceived by various declarations, images, or symbols, reputation of
the store apparent from feedback of existing customers, awareness level about
the store, as well as perceived risk accompanying transactions made with the
store. It is quite obvious that while the first three components positively affect
trust building process, the last one has a negative effect. In this research arti-
cle, “Perceived Store Risk” is used to mean the absence of risk associated with
an online store.
Purchase intention has been considered among the most commonly
identified consequences of trust (Ganguly et al. 2010). Since online trans-
action is characterized by information sharing and purchase action, pur-
chase intention will depend on many factors (Pavlou 2003). Being one of
them, interpersonal trust acts as a lubricant to facilitate online purchase
decision. The consumer is motivated by his subjective belief that the selling
party or entity will fulfill its transactional obligations as the consumer
understands them (Kim et al. 2008). Earlier research has also found that
trust beliefs may become important factors predicting purchase intention
(Dwyer, Schurr, and Oh 1987; Yoon 2002; Stewart 2003; Kim and Kim
2005; Dash and Saji 2006; Everard and Galletta 2006; Chen and Barnes
2007; Gurung, Luo, and Raja 2008), and lack of trust acts as a main reason
for not shopping online (Grabner-Kräuter and Kaluscha 2003). Researchers
have found that higher consumer online trust will result in higher customer
online purchase intention (Lim et al. 2006; Verhagen, Meents, and Tan
2006; Ling, Chai, and Piew 2010) and hence, essential for success of
business-to-consumer electronic commerce (Connolly and Bannister
2007). This argument forms the basis of the next hypothesis.
Hypothesis 5: Trust in an online store positively affects intention to purchase from it.
Attitude and purchase intention

Attitude can be defined as an enduring organization of motivational,
emotional, perceptual, and cognitive processes with respect to some aspect
of the individual’s world (Krech and Crutchfield 1948). Attitude toward an
online store is a gauge of the amount of affect or feeling for or against
intention to purchase. In his research paper, Donthu (2001) reported that
trust is related to attitude toward a website. In earlier research, consumer’s
trust in a store was found to have a significant effect on consumer’s attitude
toward the store (Schurr and Ozanne 1985; Anderson and Narus 1990;
Macintosh and Lockshin 1997; Wang and Tseng 2011). Trust also increases
attitude toward online shopping (Jarvenpaa and Todd 1997), intention to
purchase online (Limayem, Khalifa, and Frini 2000; Vijayasarathy and Jones
2000; Lynch, Kent, and Srinivasan 2001), and level of online shopping activity
(Korgaonkar and Wolin 1999; Miyazaki and Fernandez 2001). This forms the
basis of the next hypothesis.
Hypothesis 6: Trust in an online store positively affects favorable attitude toward it.
The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and the Theory of Planned

Behavior (TPB) indicate that one’s behavior is determined by intentions to
act (Ajzen and Fishbein 1980; Bagozzi 1981; Ajzen 1985). Again, one’s attitude
toward the behavior determines the intention. Online purchase intention is a
predictor of the volitional behavior of purchasing online and can be explained
by TRA. Thus, this research assumes that the stated intention to purchase
from a particular website is a reasonable predictor of actual behavior. There-
fore, a positive relation between attitude toward an online store and purchase
intention from the store is expected.
Hypothesis 7: Favorable attitude toward an online store positively affects the
intention to purchase from it.
Role of gender on trust and its effects

Previous studies found gender to have significant influence on behavior
related to shopping and technology, as well as attitude (Zeithaml 1985;
Venkatesh and Morris 2000). Also, earlier research has indicated that trust
may have different influences across gender (Awad and Ragowsky 2006).
Researchers have observed that men trust more than women in different con-
texts (Glaeser, Scheinkman, and Soutter 2000; Alesina and La Ferrara 2002;
Buchan, Croson, and Solnick 2008). Riedl, Hubert, and Kenning (2010) found
that most of the brain areas that encode trustworthiness differ between men
and women. Presentation of both trustworthy and untrustworthy Internet
offers triggered activation in more brain areas for females than for males to
evaluate cognitive tasks (e.g., memory, mathematics, or decision making),
thereby providing neurological evidence that in general, women process more
information, and do so more comprehensively, than men (Meyers-Levy and
Maheswaran 1991).
Gender affects the relationship between trust and purchase intention
(Samuel, Balaji, and Wei 2015). Women are more cautious about online risks
(Janda 2008), which may affect online purchase intention (Garbarino and
Strahilevitz 2004). More recent empirical evidence shows that these
differences apply to online trust as well (Awad and Ragowsky 2006). Males
were found to shop online more than females (Li, Kuo, and Rusell 1999).
Another study in India found that all critical consumer trust-based attributes
(including transaction security and perceived image of the website) to online
buying intention have no significant differences for gender (Sahney, Ghosh,
and Shrivastava 2013). Hence, the moderating effect of gender is analyzed
in this present study to ascertain the earlier findings in OSMM context in
India.
Conceptual model
The conceptual model, as depicted in Figure 1, demonstrates the hypotheses
that customers’ trust in an online store affects their attitude and ultimately
their intention to purchase from it. The model is consistent with Exchange
Theory (Hare, Thibaut, and Kelley 1960), TRA (Ajzen and Fishbein 1980),
and TPB (Ajzen and Fishbein 1980; Ajzen 1991). Exchange Theory suggests
that individuals form associations based on trust and try to avoid painful
relationship. TRA and TPB postulate that behavior is influenced by behavioral
intention, and beliefs can affect intention.
The conceptual model indicates that willingness to patronize sellers is
contingent on the trustworthiness of the sellers. Trust is associated with
certain perceived characteristics of the online store, vis-a-vis store
brand knowledge, perceived store size, perceived store risk, and store reputation.
Figure 1. Conceptual model.
Methodology
Sample
A total of 9,269 e-mails were sent to invite students, pursuing graduate and
post-graduate courses in reputed technical institutes in different parts of
India, to participate in the survey. The receivers were requested to participate
in an online survey by visiting a link shared in the mail. They were provided
30 days to finish the survey, with an option to save their responses and resume
responding as per their will at any later time. The software used for the survey
helped to ensure that properly filled complete responses are distinguishable
from the unusable ones.
Out of 728 students who expressed their willingness to participate in the
survey, 440 completed it, resulting in 60.58% completion rate. From these
responses, 12 were ignored for the analysis as these respondents took less than
one-third of the median time of all respondents. Four responses were deleted
because of the presence of junk data or apparent casual attitude toward some
questions. Thus, 424 usable complete responses were obtained.
Several reasons may be attributed to explain this survey completion rate.

Firstly, rapid proliferation of increasing number of online surveys has
decreased student’s willingness to respond to surveys. Secondly, the original
survey was quite long, with more than 300 questions asked, which would
require around half an hour to complete properly. Finally, official e-mail
ID of students of these institutes was used to inform them about the survey,
but students may not regularly check these official IDs.
Non-response bias was assessed to verify that early and late respondents
were not significantly different based on their socio-demographics. t-tests
between the means of the early (first 50) and late (last 50) respondents showed
no significant differences (p < .05).
The demographic details of the respondents are listed in Table 3. The mean
age of the respondents is 23.67 years with a standard deviation of 5.98 years.
73.3% are male and the rest female, while 55.98% are undergraduates, and
44.1% are post-graduates. It is worth noting that the gender ratio of students
enrolled in higher education for technical studies is skewed heavily toward
male, ranging from 65% to 70% (MHRD Government of India 2014).
Interestingly, the ratio of male to female Internet users in India has been
reported as varying between 75% : 25% (Rao 2015) to 71% : 29% (Statista 2015).
The respondents spend 5.83 hours a day in various online activities. This is
expected as a recent report suggested that Internet has highest penetration
among Indian people in this age group, and most users are male (Boston
Consultancy Group and Internet and Mobile Association of India 2015). In
earlier studies conducted in Indian context, people in the age group of
20–25 years were found to be avid online shoppers (Chahal 2015), and males
dominated over females in online shopping activities (Gangeshwer 2013;
Goswami, Baruah, and Borah 2013; Sharma, Mehta, and Sharma 2014).
Another report found that Indian Internet users spend nearly five hours
Table 3. Demographic details.

Measure Items Frequency Percentage
Age 15–20 147 34.7
21–25 169 39.9
26–30 64 15.1
31þ 44 10.4
Gender Male 311 73.3
Female 113 26.7
Education Undergraduate 237 55.98
Post-graduate 187 44.1
Time spent online in a day Less than 30 minutes 7 1.7
30 minutes to less than 1hour 22 5.2
1hour to less than 1.5 hours 30 7.1
1.5 hours to less than 2hours 39 9.2
2hours to less than 2.5 hours 31 7.3
2.5 hours to less than 3hours 47 11.1
More than 3hours 248 58.5
online every day, and OSM users in India are considerably younger than the
global average, with more than half of the user base being 23 years or younger,
and more than three-quarters of Facebook’s users in India are men (Kemp
2015). Thus, the sample considered for the study is found to be significant
in their role as users of OSM and online shopping in India.
Measurement development
The questionnaire was divided into two major parts: (1) demographic variables
and (2) construct items. Besides these, a few more questions were asked to
learn about the reason for using various social networking sites. The respon-
dents were asked to choose one of the three Indian online fashion retailers:
Jabong, Myntra, and Zovi. 74.3% chose Myntra, 22.4% Jabong, and 3.3% opted
for Zovi. All participants were provided the URL of these online stores as well
as link to their social networking pages on Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, and
LinkedIn. They were requested to visit the website of their preferred online
store and its page on their preferred online social networking site.
All constructs were multi-items and adapted with minor modifications
from past research to suit the present context. The preliminary items for
measurement were pilot tested and reviewed by two faculty members and
two scholars in the institute who are heavy users of social media and online
shopping. Store Brand Knowledge (Bart et al. 2005) had six items, Store
Reputation (Jarvenpaa et al. 2000) had two items, Perceived Store Risk
(Jarvenpaa et al. 2000) had three items, Perceived Store Size (Jarvenpaa
et al. 2000) had two items, Interpersonal Organizational Trust (Eastlick and
Lotz 2011) had eight items, Attitude (Jarvenpaa et al. 2000) had two items,
and Willingness to Purchase (Jarvenpaa et al. 2000) had four items. All items
were measured on a 5-point Likert scale in the range of 1 to 5, with 1 denoting
strong disagreement and 5 conveying strong agreement.
Results
Descriptive statistics
Table 4 mentions the means and standard deviations of the constructs.
All means are more than 50% of the highest possible value and hence show
Table 4. Descriptive statistics.
Constructs No. of items Mean Standard deviation Cronbach’s a
Store Brand Knowledge (SBK) 6 3.826 0.827 0.763
Store Reputation (SR) 2 4.158 0.747 0.754
Perceived Store Risk (PSR) 3 3.393 1.012 0.923
Perceived Store Size (PSS) 2 3.659 0.886 0.779
Trust (IPOT) 8 3.184 0.612 0.697
Attitude (SA) 2 4.005 0.828 0.836
Intention to Purchase (IPOT) 4 3.695 1.084 0.851
that participants responded positively to the research constructs. The value

of Chronbach’s a is also more than the standard level of 0.7 (Nunnally
and Bernstein 1994). This proves acceptable reliability of the survey
questionnaire.
Analytical strategy of measurement model

Variance-based partial least square (PLS) structural equation modeling has
been used to build the path model. PLS offers a few advantages over the
covariance-based structural equation modeling. It has been found to produce
accurate results from relatively small sample size and does not involve
assumptions of multivariate normality. Moreover, it can handle single- and
multi-item constructs, and deal with both formative and reflective measures.
It works on the principle of minimization of unexplained variance. Thus, PLS
has emerged as a robust alternative to the covariance based structural model-
ing techniques in the last three decades. It has been widely used in various
disciplines, such as management information systems (Ringle, Sarstedt, and
Straub 2012), accounting (Lee et al. 2011), international marketing (Henseler,
Ringle, and Sinkovics 2009), and marketing (Hair et al. 2012).
The sample size used for the current analysis is much more than the recom-
mended 10 times the largest number of structural paths directed at a parti-
cular construct in the structural model (Hair et al. 2014). As the sample
lacks multivariate normality, PLS-SEM is used for better prediction of results.
SmartPLS 2.0 (Ringle, Wende, and Will 2005) was used to test the proposed
theoretical model with empirical data. The research model is backed by
various theories as discussed earlier, and the items of the constructs (except
“Interpersonal Organizational Trust”) are considered as reflective indicators,
since the unobserved variables describe personality traits or attitudes
(Haenlein and Kaplan 2004). Interpersonal Organizational Trust is measured
by items which are a combination of indicators (Fornell and Bookstein 1982)
and represent consequences of the construct (Rossiter 2002). Moreover, the
items are not mutually interchangeable (Jarvis, MacKenzie, and Podsakoff
2003). Thus, this construct is treated as a formative one.
The data are devoid of any missing value. Path Weighing Scheme was
applied with an initial value of 1 for each of the outer weights, setting the stop
criteria to 0.00001. Maximum iteration was limited to 300, but all calculations
converged much before that. Bootstrapping was done with 1,000 samples and
individual sign change option.
Measurement model
During analysis of the measurement models, reflective indicators with outer
loadings below 0.4 were removed straightaway. Reflective indicators with
outer loading above 0.4 but below 0.7 were removed in cases where the
removal resulted in increased composite reliability or AVE above the
threshold value of 0.7 or 0.5, respectively. Indicators of Formative Construct
(“Interpersonal Organizational Trust”) with t statistics less than 1.96 (5% level
of significance) and outer loading below 0.5 were considered for deletion from
further analysis (Hair et al. 2014). This resulted in removal of one item from
Store Brand Knowledge (SBK04) from further analysis. Thus, only reflective
indicators with sufficient individual reliability were considered for the analy-
sis. The results of the analysis done on the measurement model are depicted
in Table 5.
The composite reliability exceeded the benchmark of 0.7 (Nunnally and
Bernstein 1994), proving high internal consistency. The average variance
extracted (AVE) was also more than 0.5 for each construct (Fornell and
Larcker 1981). Thus, adequate convergent validity was also ensured.
On evaluation of cross loading, each reflective indictor’s outer loading on
the associated construct was found to be greater than all of its loadings on
other constructs. Moreover, square root of the AVE of each construct was
higher than its highest correlation with any other construct (Fornell and
Larcker 1981) (see Table 6). Both of these evaluations indicated acceptable
discriminant validity.
A new model was proposed to test for the convergent validity of the forma-
tive construct, “Interpersonal Organizational Trust.” A global item was
included in the original survey questionnaire which summarizes the essence
of “Interpersonal Organizational Trust.” The respondents were requested to
rate their agreement on a scale of 1–5 (1 indicating strong disagreement
Table 5. Test results on measurement model.

Constructs Item Skewness Kurtosis Composite reliability AVE
Store Brand Knowledge SBK01 –1.309 2.376 0.924 0.517
SBK02 –0.542 0.494
SBK03 –0.547 0.58
SBK05 –0.565 0.628
SBK06 –0.672 0.488
Store Reputation SR01 –1.121 1.963 0.890 0.802
SR02 –0.625 0.928
Perceived Store Risk SRP01 –0.163 –0.983 0.951 0.866
SRP02 0.208 –0.495
SRP03 –0.312 –0.428
Perceived Store Size PSS01 –0.372 –0.335 0.900 0.818
PSS02 –0.559 0.052
Attitude SA01 –1.001 1.594 0.924 0.859
SA02 –0.796 0.497
Intention to Purchase WP01 –1.114 1.333 0.897 0.687
WP02 –0.936 1.002
WP03 –0.243 –0.776
WP04 –0.524 –0.359
Table 6. Discriminant validity assessment of reflective constructs (Fornell-Larcker criteria)

(N.B. diagonals represent square root of AVE).
SA SBK IP SR PSR PSS
SA 0.927
SBK 0.369 0.717
IP 0.392 0.310 0.825
SR 0.518 0.410 0.333 0.893
PSR 0.207 0.212 0.253 0.212 0.931
PSS 0.370 0.300 0.218 0.530 0.128 0.905
and 5 indicating strong agreement) for the statement, “I trust this store to
be honest and sincere to its promises.” This alternative reflective global
construct yielded a path coefficient of 0.854 with the original formative
construct. This proves sufficient convergent validity of the formative
construct (Chin 1998).
Formative indicators were found to be free of multicollinearity, as evident
from tolerance values more than 0.2 and VIF less than 5 for each of them
(Hair et al. 2014), which is shown in Table 7.
Structural model
The hypothesized relationship among the various constructs was assessed
with SmartPLS software. The model (Figure 2) was found to be free from mul-
ticollinearity, evident from tolerance values more than 0.2 and VIF less than 5
(Hair et al. 2014) (Table 8).
Store Brand Knowledge (b ¼ 0.186, p < .01), Store Reputation (b ¼ 0.133,
p < .05), and Perceived Store Risk (b ¼ 0.229, p < .01) were found to signifi-
cantly influence Trust, but Perceived Store Size did not have any significant
influence on it. Thus, Hypothesis 1, Hypothesis 2, and Hypothesis 4 are
accepted, while the researchers fail to accept Hypothesis 3.
Trust is found to significantly influence Attitude (b ¼ 0.304, p < .01) and
Intention to Purchase (b ¼ 0.133, p < .01). Attitude is found to have signifi-
cant influence on Intention to Purchase (b ¼ 0.351, p < .01). Thus, Hypothesis
5, Hypothesis 6, and Hypothesis 7 are also accepted.
Table 7. Assessment for multicollinearity (formative indicators).

Tolerance VIF
IPOT01 0.478 2.093
IPOT02 0.446 2.242
IPOT03 0.844 1.185
IPOT04 0.544 1.836
IPOT05 0.548 1.824
IPOT06 0.465 2.151
IPOT07 0.805 1.243
IPOT08 0.538 1.858
Figure 2. Structural model (significant; not significant). Note. * ¼ significant at 0.01; # ¼ significant
at 0.05.
Table 8. Assessment for multicollinearity (structural model).

Tolerance VIF
IPOT 0.907 1.102
SA 0.907 1.102
PSR 0.937 1.068
PSS 0.710 1.409
SBK 0.806 1.241
SR 0.641 1.561
Discussion and conclusion

Discussion
This study found that Perceived Store Risk is the most important factor for
Trust in an online store. This is followed by Store Brand Knowledge and Store
Reputation. A novel finding for this study is that trust can also directly lead to
formation of intention to purchase.
The mediator analysis of data revealed that Attitude partially mediates the
relation between Trust and Intention to Purchase (VAF ¼ 31%, p ¼ .01). In
other words, 31% of the effect of Trust on Intention to Purchase is explained

via Attitude as the mediator (Table 9). This is in sync with the TRA and TPB,
which state that attitude precedes intention.
The total effect of Perceived Store Risk and Store Brand Knowledge are sig-
nificant on Intention to Purchase at p < .01 and at p < .05, respectively. On
the other hand, Store Reputation and Perceived Store Size do not have any
significant influence on Intention to Purchase (Table 10).
Upon investigating the indicators of the constructs, it is found that consu-
mers are more likely to form intention to purchase from an online store if
they view the purchase decision as a positive situation and find high potential
of gain from the transaction. Companies should, therefore, attempt to create a
risk-free positive feeling in the mind of the consumers to increase their sales.
The OSM profile of an online store should be consistent with its perceived
quality. Consumers perceive the quality of the brands being promoted
through the OSM profile as indicative of the quality of the store. Thus, good
quality of products promoted through the right message can positively
influence Brand Image and Awareness, leading to higher level of Brand
Knowledge. This in turn may lead to formation of high intention to purchase
and facilitate increased sales.
The findings of this study are supported by earlier studies done on e-
commerce companies. It was earlier found that a company’s reputation
has strong effect on online consumers’ trust in the website (Kim 2008).
Besides this, trust beliefs and Internet security awareness were found to be
significant predictors of intention (Gurung, Luo, and Raja 2008). Positive
relation between reputation and trust has been found in prior research
works as well (McKnight et al. 2000, 2002; Rajagopal 2010). Brand Aware-
ness (Yoon 2002) and Brand Image (Rajagopal 2010) were also found to
be significant predictors of Trust.
Table 9. Mediator effect of trust between trust and intention to

purchase.
Indirect effect size 0.107
Standard Deviation 0.024
Empirical t value 4.422
VAF 31%
Table 10. Total effect.

Original sample T Statistics p value Lower limit Upper limit
SA → IP 0.351 7.159 0.000 0.255 0.447
SBK → IP 0.045 2.255 0.025 0.006 0.083
SR → IP 0.032 1.57 0.117 –0.008 0.072
PSR → IP 0.055 3.08 0.002 0.020 0.090
PSS → IP 0.004 0.227 0.821 –0.030 0.038
IPOT → IP 0.240 4.99 0.000 0.146 0.334
The present study also found that perceived risk, brand knowledge, and
reputation are significant predictors of trust in an online store, whereas trust
leads to formation of attitude and intention to purchase. While earlier
researchers found the effect of perceived size to be significant (Jarvenpaa
et al. 2000; Kim and Noh 2012), this study could not find any such relation-
ship. This finding probably points to the power of word-of-mouth in OSMM.
People place more importance on the feedback of earlier customers of an
online store than on its size. While size of an online store may act as an
important cue before making purchase decision from an unknown store,
the feedback of existing customers of an online store may influence purchase
decision making process more. Hence, perceived store size loses its impor-
tance in the context of OSMM.
Further analysis was undertaken to understand the effect of gender on
trust, which gave rise to an interesting observation. For males, Store Brand
Knowledge and Perceived Store Risk remain significant (at p < .001) antece-
dents to trust. However, when analyzed separately for females, only Store
Brand Knowledge was found to be significant (at p < .10) as antecedent to
trust in the online store. The total effect of Trust on Purchase Intention is sig-
nificant for both males (b ¼ 0.109, p < .001) and females (b ¼ 0.174, p < .01).
Moreover, in case of males, trust on the store may directly result into purchase
intention (b ¼ 0.199, p < .01), but females form purchase intention only after
they perceive the online stores in positive attitude. This finding is in tune with
earlier observations that men are more likely to intend to use the web for
making purchases than women. Men rate the trustworthiness of online stores
higher than women. This also corroborates with earlier research done on
online trust in Indian context, establishing significant impact of trust on
the customer purchase intention. Males are found to have more intention
to shop online than females (Thamizhvanan and Xavier 2013).
Practical implication
Since various OSMs, including Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, and Pinterest
are planning to launch direct purchase facility from within the OSM platform,
stores must focus more on being perceived as trustworthy and increase con-
sumer’s favorable attitude toward them in order to increase sales. Trust in
online stores is one of the key obstacles to online transactions. Therefore, suc-
cessful e-business operation requires a deep understanding of how trust is
developed and how it affects purchase intention in online stores. This research
article highlights some of those factors that are under considerable influence
of company to help in this regard.
Findings of this study clearly indicate that in the age of OSMM, the size of the
store is of least importance while making a purchase decision. Consumers are
more worried about the risk involved in transactions. Once an online store
successfully assures its prospective consumers of various security measures

available to them to minimize risk, consumers have a better chance of trusting
the store and may easily be influenced to make a purchase decision when
needed. They should also try to educate consumers about secure online pur-
chase and showcase their achievement in ensuring digital safety. Displaying
security certificates or seals can help in increasing perception of safe online
transaction.
Online stores also must create more awareness about their presence
through proper messages to bring their stores at the top of mind of the con-
sumers. They should select right brands, which are representative of their own
quality, to be sold through their stores. Stores must focus more on maintain-
ing good reputation online. This can be done by providing quick response to
consumer queries, maintaining a dedicated and loyal customer group, and
highlighting fast complaint resolution.
Earlier scholars found that culture acts as a moderator in the relationship
between trust and purchase intention, but cultural variation at country level
may be less, and country should not be used as surrogate of culture (Ganguly
et al. 2010). The sample for this study has been taken from different regions of
India, and each region has sub-culture associated with it, thus aiming at better
representation of the sample to national culture as an aggregate.
Customers with high uncertainty avoidance characteristics are supposed to
perceive higher risk from using the Internet. Their preference for avoiding
risk makes them resistant to the use of the Internet (Nath and Murthy
2004). When dealing with countries high on uncertainty avoidance, organiza-
tions must stress trust in online stores to reduce the perceived risk associated
with online transactions (Lim et al. 2004). Being medium to low on uncer-
tainty avoidance (The Hofstede Centre 2016), the participants of this study
still showed the maximum impact of risk perception toward formation of
trust. This, once again, proves that in the online environment, companies
should stress on risk reduction techniques for their consumers.
Customers high on masculinity give more preference to information cues
for evaluating the quality and performance of products (Tai and Chan
2001). Since India is considered as having a highly masculine culture (The
Hofstede Centre 2016), it was not surprising to find that brand knowledge
about the online stores was considered very important for generation of
online trust in the stores. Thus, taking cues from earlier research work and
coupled with present research findings, it can be argued that online stores
must provide accurate, detailed, relevant, and current information about them
to increase trustworthiness (Corritore et al. 2005), purchase intention (Park
and Stoel 2005), and loyalty (Mithas et al. 2006).
Online stores should also strive to increase their perceived reputation for a
successful OSMM strategy. OSMM provides an effective, albeit difficult to
control, mechanism to achieve this goal. Discussion in virtual communities
of the various OSM may lead to positive recommendation by WOM. This

results in a stronger increase in willingness to purchase online than by
advertising and recommendation systems (Chang and Chin 2010).
Recognizing the significant value of consumer product reviews as a source
of information and an avenue to trusting a website, marketers should enable
and encourage consumers to post product reviews and opinions on the OSM
pages of their e-retail sites (Bart et al. 2005; Mayzlin 2006).
With respect to online shopping, one study (Swaminathan, Lepkowska-
White, and Rao 1999) found that male buyers were more convenience-
oriented and less motivated by social interaction than female buyers. Women
have highly positive attitudes toward shopping, associating it with a leisure
frame, whereas men tend to view it as work that should be accomplished with
minimum input of time and effort (Campbell 2000; Dittmar and Drury 2000).
The findings of this study also point in that direction, as male consumers may
directly form purchase intention once they have trusted the online stores,
whereas female consumers go through the longer route of attitude formation.
This indicates that online stores must engage more with female consumers to
understand their needs and requirements better. They should offer
consumers, especially the female ones, appropriate avenues for expressing
themselves. This particular finding is of utmost importance to those online
stores which deal with women’s products.
Limitation and scope for future research

This research article discusses perceived store characteristics as antecedents to
trust in an online store promoting its products or services by using OSMM.
Although earlier research work has focused on trust in e-commerce
companies, this article has considered those stores which specifically employ
OSMM as a major tool of marketing and promotion. This research proves
empirically that with the advent of OSMM, the advantage of big companies
has reduced considerably. Still, research on OSMM is in its early phase and
needs further exploration for better understanding.
The sample chosen for this study is taken from a young population.
Although consumers in this age group are of vital importance for online
shopping, the results of this study must be cautiously considered before any
further generalization.
Trust in an online store, attitude toward it, and intention to purchase from
it depend on characteristics other than those related to the store only. This
fact is also evident from the low R-square values in those cases. Factors which
influence these three constructs may include the structure of the OSM chosen
or the target audience. These perspectives have been deliberately excluded
from the purview of the current research article, as online stores do not have
sufficient control on them, which was the focus of this research. Still, in order
to get a holistic idea of the factors affecting these constructs, further study is
needed. The moderating role of various demographic factors may also be
explored for a better understanding of the consumer behavior in relation to
OSMM.
OSMM is fast emerging as a strong and an alternate form of e-commerce.
This has given smaller organizations the capability to compete with the bigger
ones. Companies must carefully choose their branding strategy on OSM,
highlight their strengths in front of the prospective consumers, and maintain
a dedicated customer group in order to increase consumers’ trust and
favorable attitude to ultimately enhance their sales volume.
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Appendix
Table A1. Definition of constructs.

Construct Definition Reference
Store Brand Knowledge All descriptive and evaluative brand related (Keller 1993)
information stored in consumer’s
memory, measured by Brand Awareness
and Brand Image
Store Reputation The extent to which buyers believe an (Doney and Cannon
online store to be honest and concerned 1997)
about its customers
Perceived Store Risk Trustor’s belief about likelihoods of gains (Mayer et al. 1995)
and losses outside of considerations that
involve the relationships with the
particular trustee
Perceived Store Size Size of an online store as perceived by the (Jarvenpaa et al. 2000)
consumer from various cues available
online
Interpersonal A psychological state or orientation of an (Rousseau et al. 1998)
Organizational Trust actor (the trustor) comprising the
intention to accept vulnerability based
on positive expectations of the
intentions or behaviors of a specific
partner (the trustee) with who the actor
is in some way interdependent
Attitude An enduring organization of motivational, (Krech and Crutchfield
emotional, perceptual and cognitive 1948)
processes with respect to some aspect of
the individual’s world
Intention to Purchase A predictor of the volitional behavior of (Jarvenpaa et al. 2000)
purchasing online

Exploring The Effect of Store Characteristics and Interpersonal Trust On Purchase Intention in The Context of Online Social Media Marketing

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Journal of Internet Commerce

ISSN: 1533-2861 (Print) 1533-287X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wico20

Exploring the Effect of Store Characteristics and

Nirankush Dutta & Anil Bhat

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15332861.2016.1191053

Published online: 27 Sep 2016.

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Exploring the Effect of Store Characteristics and

Significance and objective of research

Research has been conducted on trust in various online contexts, such as

Table 1. Selected empirical papers on trust in different online contexts.

chance of users of OSM perceiving these characteristics in a different light

Structure of the article

of the research is discussed in detail. The subsequent section describes the

Building positive reputation is a difficult, time-consuming, and expensive

Perceived store size

Perceived store risk

Trust and its effects

institutional, and (c) interpersonal constructs, where dispositional trust is most

Attitude and purchase intention

The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and the Theory of Planned

Role of gender on trust and its effects

Figure 1. Conceptual model.

Several reasons may be attributed to explain this survey completion rate.

Table 3. Demographic details.

that participants responded positively to the research constructs. The value

Analytical strategy of measurement model

Table 5. Test results on measurement model.

Table 6. Discriminant validity assessment of reflective constructs (Fornell-Larcker criteria)

Table 7. Assessment for multicollinearity (formative indicators).

Table 8. Assessment for multicollinearity (structural model).

Discussion and conclusion

other words, 31% of the effect of Trust on Intention to Purchase is explained

Table 9. Mediator effect of trust between trust and intention to

Table 10. Total effect.

successfully assures its prospective consumers of various security measures

of the various OSM may lead to positive recommendation by WOM. This

Limitation and scope for future research

Fuchs, C. 2011. An alternative view of privacy on Facebook. Information 2 (4):140–65.

Table A1. Definition of constructs.

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