The effects of shopping site quality and customer trust on online purchase intention

This thesis contributes to the understanding of the role of web quality factors in the context of online customers’ trust in vendor and purchase intention. The thesis provides a new theoretical perspective to the constructs and relationships that exist between three quality factors and customer trust, by using a conceptual framework based on the integration of two seminal theories from the fields of information systems success and communication persuasiveness: the information systems success model (ISSM) and source credibility theory (SCT). This new conceptual model relates information quality, system quality and service quality with trust in vendor, which in turn is linked to online purchase intention. The model is empirically tested using data from 644 participants from the United Kingdom and has used structural equation modelling to confirm the model fit. This research has also considered the use of review techniques such as meta-analysis and weight analysis to observe the popular and most significant antecedents of trust and online purchase intention. For this evaluation, 115 papers have been analyzed from different streams of management of information systems (MIS) literature, as well as marketing research mainly from an online shopping context. The reason for employing such techniques is to support the construct choices made by the present study with the accumulated empirical knowledge derived from the existing literature. The findings confirmed that information quality, system quality and service quality play important roles in improving high levels of trust in a shopping site. Results suggest that shopping sites could show their credibility through the three quality factors and thereby improve customer trust. This represents a signalling of institution-based trust that improves customer cognitive trust in order to develop successful long-term B2C relationships. The research has also provided some interesting insights regarding a moderating variable on the relationship between customer trust and online purchase intention: customer web skills