Studying the Influencing Factors on Online Brand Trust

Introduction Electronic marketing is one of the modern approaches to marketing resulting from the developments in the field of communications and technology. The abundant advantages of electronic marketing have given it a rapid increase in the use and importance. Among the outcomes of electronic marketing development, we can refer to the increase of firms and markets’ accessibility to marketers and sales representatives, improvement of information available to customers and other market players, challenging customer satisfaction, competitive threats, facilitating commercial negotiations and transactions, and reduction of marketing costs (Kotler & Armstrong 2001). According to the increasing abilities of this type of marketing, goods distributers and service providers are required to pay more attention and investment in this area otherwise they will lag behind their competitors and will suffer irreparable damage. Consequently, customers will replace electronic marketing so as to decrease extra expenses. The area of online shopping opens a window of opportunity to many businesses; besides, it has excessive advantages for costumers compared to traditional shopping. As one of its clear advantages, customers can purchase goods and services from everywhere in the world without any problem. Moreover, the products are delivered to their homes while the online stores are open in every time of the year. In the era of super competition and emergence of online business, fulfilling the goals of new marketing approaches in the firms depends to a great extent on the trust of their customers. Hence, the issue of customers’ trust has gained excessive popularity as the underlying factor of successful electronic commerce. The final suggestion of all new approaches to marketing in the competitive market is maintenance of costumers. Here, a basic question arises: how can we maintain costumers who are very powerful, intelligent, various, and out of reach, by a certain commercial brand for a long period of time? Certainly, the answer to this question cannot be sought only in the quality of services and products because they are reduced to the minimum features in the competitive markets of today world and if the firms do not provide such minimum features they will not find any place in the competition. Maybe it can be said that the first step toward achieving the great objective of marketing is attempting to build trust in the customers (Peppers & Rogers, 1993). If we look deeper through new marketing approaches which try to make customers faithful, it can be inferred that no customer ever remains faithful to a firm without trusting it; and the harsh flows of competition draws him to other directions. In the view of a consumer, the most important thing in establishing a relationship is trust, because without trust commitment of customers to a commercial brand is not possible. A consumer who trusts a certain brand remains faithful to it and pays a higher price for its products (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001). Despite many benefits in using online purchase, many Internet users are still having no confident to use it. Researchers such as: Gefen (2000), Harn, et al. (2006) and Koufaris & Hampton-Sosa (2004) have suggested that lack of trust is a major hindrance in online purchase. In a survey, the consumers stated their main reason for their reluctance toward online shopping in 2003 as: distrust in ordering methods 43%, lack of shopping enjoyment 34%, not observing the product closely 9% (Hawkins et al., 2007). Doney & Cannon (1997) showed that the concept of trust is only related to the conditions of uncertainty. In particular, electronic trust decreases uncertainty in the environments where consumers encounter problems because they know that the brand is trustable. Thus, when a firm selects strategies to make its transactions and marketing online, should also account for the strategies which decrease concerns and increase customers’ trust. Moreover, regarding the factors of importance of professional presence in the internet such as raising credit, enhancing availability as everywhere and every time, increasing the value of advertisement, communicating with potential customers, and increasing the commercial brand prestige, the websites prove to be a powerful selling tool. Besides, the fact that every member of society is a potential customer or consumer in a period of time, identifying the effective elements on customers’ trust seems vital for both involved parties. However, for an online website aimed at building trust for customers, certain features Studying the Influencing Factors on Online Brand Trust Seyed Mohammad Alavinasab and Seyed Hasan Mohaghegh Kamal Faculty of Management, Farabi College, University of Tehran, Iran.