Value Congruence and Trust Online: Their Impact on Privacy and Pr ...

Quelch and Klein (1996) argued that trust is a key factor in stimulating Internet purchases, especially at the early stage of commercial development. Luo (2002) asserted that the lack of online trust is one of the most crucial reasons why firms exit online businesses. Ba and Pavlou (2002) found that high levels of trust lead to the ability of vendors to charge price premiums. Brynjolfsson and Smith (2000) observed that online retailers offering the lowest prices do not necessarily register the highest sales and contended that trust is an important source for explaining the discrepancy.

Based on these findings from prior studies, trust clearly has a profound impact on e-commerce transactions. With a better understanding of trust, we can learn to address some of the concerns that consumers have when doing business and sharing information online. On the other hand, we still do not fully understand how to create and maintain trust in the virtual e-marketplace. The recent dot com failures also attested to the need for enhancing investors’ confidence and customers’ trust in commercial online systems. With a greater amount of trust, many of these failed companies would have been able to alleviate customers’ concerns about doing business with them and thus have increased their chances of staying in business.

Cazier et al. (2003b) found a significant and consistent impact from value congruence on trust in e-business organizations. In an experiment they randomly assigned about 100 subjects to each of three groups representing a value match, value conflict and value neutral case. Each subject was randomly assigned to one of three different scenarios. In each scenario, the subjects were assumed to visit a website that asked them to voluntarily disclose some personal information in order to help it better understand its customer base. Twenty information items were requested, ranging in sensitivity from their favorite snack to their Social Security Number. The subjects indicated if they would disclose a specific information item to the organization or if the information item was not applicable to their personal situations.