A Study Of The Antecedents Of Online Stores Trust Based On Relationship Stages

In the traditional environment, relationship marketing has been accepted by the academy and industry, and marketing researchers began to focus on how to retain existing customers, rather than to win new customers; moreover, building steady relationships with the customers has also become the business's increasingly important goal. In the Internet environment, enterprises still need to attract, establish and maintain relationships with customers, and consumer trust plays an important role in establishing and maintaining the relationships with customers. Whether they have online shopping experience, consumers all have more or less trust problems. However, for different consumer groups, the factors that impact on their trust are not the same.This study dynamically researches online consumer trust, studies how to establish and maintain consumers' trust in online companies. First, this study reviews and summarizes the literatures on online trust and relationship stages; on this basis, this study researches the factors of online consumer trust from trustor's characteristic and trustee's characteristic, and then proposes an Chinese consumer online trust model, that is, website content,ease of use,interactivity,security/privacy and disposition of trust have effect on ability trust and benevolence trust; and then, this study specifies the stages of the relationship between consumers and Internet retailers, examines the model in two most representative stages, and explores the difference in the influence of these factors between the two stages. As a result, this study proposed an online trust model combining time and trade entity and proves this model using empirical methods.After respectively testing the theoretical model in the samples of exploration and extension stages, we conclude that the model is valid in the two stages. By testing the differences of the path coefficients in the two stages, we find that from exploration stage to extension stage, ease of use has more effect on ability trust and benevolence trust; website interactivity has more effect on benevolence trust; website security/privacy has less effect on ability trust and benevolence trust; disposition to trust has less effect on ability trust and benevolence trust. Finally, the paper discusses the theoretical and practical significance, and then prospects for future research.