A Trust Based Model of Buying Behavior in Electronic Retailing

The exponential growth of the Internet has seen the use of this medium by organizations to sell their goods and services. While buying and selling over the Internet has grown dramatically so has been the failure of ventures that were started to sell goods or services over the Internet. This paper attributes this failure to be a function of improper understanding on the part of sellers as to how buyers buy products or services over the Internet. Focusing on the retail side of electronic commerce, this paper develops a model to explain buying behavior for products over the Internet. The model developed emphasizes on trust as being an essential component and that trust coupled with buyer motivation can help understand and manage buying over the Internet