Asymmetrical Impact of Trustworthiness Attributes on Trust, Perceived Value and Purchase Intention: A Conceptual Framework for Cross-cultural Study on Consumer Perception of Online Auction Bessie Chong
Zhilin Yang
Michael Wong
City University of Hong Kong Tat Chee Ave., Kowloon Hong Kong +852-2263 6374
City University of Hong Kong Tat Chee Ave., Kowloon Hong Kong +852-2788 4644
City University of Hong Kong Tat Chee Ave., Kowloon Hong Kong +852-2788 7248
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
Lack of trust has been frequently cited to be one of the key factors that discourage customers from participating in e-commerce, while cultural differences affect the formation of trust. As such, this cross-cultural study aims at establishing a conceptual framework to investigate the primary antecedents of online trust and the mechanism that converts consumer trust into perceived value and purchase intention in online auction. Two elements of our model bear mention here. First, the authors divide the consumer trust into two facets, seller and intermediary trust, and intend to assess their reciprocal relationships. Second, the authors intend to examine the asymmetrical impact of the negative and positive trustworthiness attributes on trust, and the interrelationship among trust, perceived value and purchase intention across cultural groups.
This research aims to establish a theoretical framework to study the relationships between online trust and its various antecedents, and between online trust and its consequences, particularly as purchase intention, in online auction, across different cultures. Compared to net shopping, factor of trust should be more critical in the context of online auction because information validability, institutional protection and reputation system for online auction are even weaker than for net shopping [15]. The impacts of national characteristics, like Individualism and Collectivism as well as High and Low Uncertainty Avoidance, on the above relationships will also be examined. Specifically, this article intends to study the following key research questions: 1.
What are the key dimensions of online trust?
2.
What are the relationships among online trust, perceived values of goods and services, and online purchase intentions? How do the cultural differences moderate the above interrelationships?
3.
Is there a reciprocal influence between seller trust (that is, trust in the party offering goods for sale) and intermediary trust (trust in the party running the online auction 1 )? Do cultural differences moderate this relationship?
4.
Are the relationships between trust and its antecedents linear, or do low levels of the antecedents have a greater effect than do higher levels? If such asymmetrical relationships exist, are there similarly asymmetrical effects on perceived value and purchase intention? Are the sizes and directions of such asymmetries moderated by culture?
Keywords
Trust, Purchase Intention, Online Auction, Consumer Behavior
1. INTRODUCTION
Trust, by reducing uncertainty about the future, is a necessity for relationships between participants who are expected, or tempted, to display opportunistic behaviors [29]. Trust should be a particularly critical factor in online auction in which the consumer does not have direct control over the actions of the seller. Most studies on trust in e-commerce (hereafter, online trust) have been limited to antecedents or consequences of trust. As a result, there exists a gap in linking antecedents of online trust to perceived values of products and services, and to purchase intention. Furthermore, online trust researches have been limited to western context, particularly focusing on the U.S. [7, 8, 13, 43]. However, the trust theories and mechanisms developed in the western context might not apply for other societies, especially since culture may affect the antecedents of trust [37]. For instance, Sako and Helper [37] noted that there were differences in trust perceptions between Japanese and US subjects in terms of level of trust, the way in which trust was conceptualized, and the way in which it was formed. Thus, there is a need to re-examine the notion of trust and identify its determinants in the context of different markets and cultures [28]. Copyright is held by the author/owner. ICEC 2003. Pittsburgh, PA ACM 1-58113-788-5/03/09
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2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Trust is a binding force in most buyer-seller transactions. It serves as a form of implicit contracting [5]. From the social psychologist perspectives, trust is characterized in terms of the expectation and willingness of the trusting party engaging in a transaction, the risks associated with and acting on such expectations, and the
1
The authors assume that the intermediary is an unaligned third party, like eBay and Yahoo!Auction.
contextual factors that serve to either enhance or inhibit the development and maintenance of that trust [28]. Gambetta [20] conceptualized trust by the term subjective probability with which an agent will perform a particular action, however trust is more than a subjective probability in decisions. Trustors’ decisions and behaviors depend on the specific, qualitative evaluations and mental components; internal or external attribution of risk and success; different evaluation on trustee’s competence and willingness; and different predictions both about trustor’s decisions and possible interventions and cautions [12]. A review of relevant literature (see table 1) reveals that buyer’s trust in seller is a multifaceted construct and the most common use dimensions are integrity, benevolence and competence. Consumers justify the trustworthiness of the sellers or intermediaries by evaluating their ability and incentive to provide the goods/services as agreed and their capability and intention to persist the good performance over time. Thus, we hypothesize three antecedents of trust ascribed to both online sellers and intermediaries as integrity, competence and benevolence. Table 1. Attributes of Trustworthiness Author Walter, Mueller and Helfert [44] Doney and Cannon [17] Ganesan [21] Morgan and Hunt [33] Javenpaa and Tractinsky [26] Barber [9] McKnight and Chervany [31] Lee and Turban [28] Ba [6] Cheung and Lee [14] Mayer, Davis and Schoorman [30] Sirdeshmukh, Singh and Sabol [41] Bhattacherjee [11]
Trustworthiness Attributes Benevolence, Honesty, Competence, Commitment Credibility, Benevolence Commitment, Expertise, Reliability, Intentionality Reliability, Integrity, Confidence, Commitment Motivation, Ability, Integrity, Benevolence Persistence, Competence, Consistent, Stable Competence, Benevolence, Integrity, Predictability Ability, Integrity, Benevolence Reliability, Predictability, Fairness Perceived Integrity, Perceived Competency Ability, Integrity, Benevolence Operational Competence, Operational Benevolence, Problem-Solving Orientation Ability, Integrity, Benevolence
3. MODEL’S FRAMEWORK 3.1 Conceptual Model
e-Commerce brings enormous opportunities for both consumers and businesses in the world but not many e-business can turn the opportunities into commerce. Lack of trust is one of the most frequently cited reasons for consumers not purchasing from Internet [28]. Thus, our prime focus is to investigate the relationships between trust, value and purchase intention, and the differences of their relationships across cultural groups. The conceptual model guiding this research is depicted in Figure 1.
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Consumers do not directly buy the products from auction sites or some other forms of online trading platforms where just provide the matching services for sellers and buyers. Therefore, difference from previous research, the authors divide trust into two facets, which are seller and intermediary trust. It is presumed that the reciprocal impact of seller and intermediary trust will be found as the brand name effect of the intermediary would reinforce consumer trust in seller. Institutions create and foster a kind of trust defined as “Institutional Trust” and the development of “Institutional Trust” will lead to a decrease in the consumerperceived level of risk of transaction over the Internet [38]. Besides, intermediate governance mechanisms are used to enforce trustworthy behavior. It is because “if the appropriate governance devices are in place, the cost of opportunistic behavior will be greater than its benefit, and it will be in the rational self-interest of exchange partners to behave in a trustworthy way” [10]. Inspired by the Technology Acceptance Model [16], perceived usefulness has strong influence on users’ intentions to use the information technology system. Similarly, the value perceived by the customers will influence their purchase intention; therefore, the construct of perceived value has been added into the model. Followed the work of Sirdeshmukh, Singh and Sabol [41] and Mittal, Ross and Baldasare [32], an asymmetrical impact of positive and negative trustworthiness dimensions has been introduced into the model. It is suggested that the influence of negative attributes of trust would bring a lopsided impact on formation of trust, value perceived by the consumers and purchase intention. That means the perceived risk generated from uncertain feeling might override the perceived value of online transaction that will eventually affect the purchase intention. Further, we believe that the magnitude of such impact would be significantly different across cultural groups. It is because culture influences how people value the cost of negative consequences (defections) relative to the utility of positive consequences (successful transactions).
3.2
Model’s Components
3.2.1
Trust in Sellers and Intermediaries
Consumer’ s trust in e-commerce is hypothesized to consist of two distinct facets, seller trust and intermediary trust. In e-commerce, buyers often do not directly deal with the sellers (either individual or corporate) but rather with the intermediary who serves as an agent for bringing sellers and buyers together and facilitating their transactions. Seller trust is a belief or expectation that the word or promise by the seller can be relied upon and the seller will not take advantage of the consumer’ s vulnerability [22]. The authors further define “ intermediary trust” as a buyer’ s belief that the intermediary would protect users, provide a secure and stable environment, and offer ensuring problem-free transactions. Thus, trust in seller and intermediary, in turn, would reduce consumers’ perceived risk of online auction. There are two main uncertainties of the buyers while transacting online. The first one is whether the sellers/intermediaries can supply the goods/services in agreed-upon quantity, price, time and condition and fulfill the expectation of the customers, which is referred to perceived competence. The second one is whether the sellers/intermediaries are willing to comply with the transaction
agreement and commit to their customers, which is referred to perceived integrity. They are the dimensions of measurement for
expectations of others [1], while commitment is used to measure the degree of bidder perceived the seller committed in the
Attributes of Seller Trustworthiness Perceived Integrity
Perceived Benevolence
Attributes of Intermediary Trustworthiness Perceived Integrity
Perceived Competency
Asymmetric Impact Across Cultural Groups
Perceived Competency
Perceived Value
Seller Trust
Trust on Online Auction
Asymmetric Impact Across Cultural Groups
Online Purchase Intention
Intermediary Trust
Perceived Benevolence
Figure 1. Research Model trust attributes, and the last attributes of trustworthiness is perceived benevolence, which will be a motivator with a potential to create positive affect on purchase intention (see table 2). Table 2. Dimensions of Trustworthiness Attributes Trustworthiness Attributes Dimensions Perceived Integrity Honesty, Credibility, Commitment Expertise, Ability to complete the Perceived Competency transactions, Ability to perform consistently Perceived Benevolence Goodwill, Considerate
3.2.1.1 Perceived Integrity
Perceived Integrity refers to the perception of bidder on the honesty of seller (and intermediary) and the confidence of customer on the behavior of seller congruent with his/her own words and adhering to the agreed rules [14]. Trust encompasses honesty, which means that the trusting party relies to the relationship partner being credible [17, 21]. Trust also consists of willingness belief that refers to the party is willing to perform certain duty [12]. Due to the time asymmetry in delivery, the bidder does not know whether the seller will fulfill the transaction after get paid. So if the bidder believes the seller is willing to comply with the transaction arrangement, the trustworthiness of the seller will likely be increased. Thus, trustworthiness also refers to the capacity to commit oneself to fulfill the legitimate
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transaction and the intermediary committed in helping the users to complete the transaction. If the bidder perceives the seller/intermediary has high commitment to the relationship/transaction, it will reduce the bidder belief on vulnerability and perceived risk and in return, increase likelihood of the transaction.
3.2.1.2 Perceived Competency
Perceived competency is defined as the Internet users’ perception on the skills, abilities and expertise of Internet vendors [14]. It is an evaluation of the other party (trustee) whether she/he is useful for accomplishing the goal, can produce or provide the expected result, and will play a role in plan or action [43]. Ability of the seller/intermediary refers to not only his ability to fulfill customer expectation by supplying the goods and services his promised in agreed-upon price, quality, time and condition, but also his ability to provide consistent and persistence performance [9]. The decision of trusting somebody is based on the expectation of trustee’ s behavior, which is made relying on his past performance. Predictability and expectation fulfillment of the seller and intermediary is critical for online auction. Good trading records of sellers make bidders believe that sellers can fulfill the expectation. Then, the bidders can make prediction under the environment of asymmetry information upon it. Thus, the higher the consistency of the seller’ s behavior, the greater the ability to perform desirably in future, and the more the consumer trust. Specifically, if the bidder believes the seller has ability to supply the product or service in agreed-manner or has expertise on that
product or service and can deliver on time consistently; or if the bidder believes the intermediary can provide quality services from time to time, it will enhance the consumer trust.
3.2.1.3 Perceived Benevolence
Benevolence is the extent to which the trusting party believes that the trusted party wants to do good things rather than just maximizes profit [28]. Benevolence-based trust is in form of goodwill that benevolent partners can be trusted to take initiatives (favoring the customer) while refraining from unfair advantage taking [36]. The empirical findings from Hess [23] and Smith and Barclay [42] showed the influence of benevolence in the development of trust. Benevolence goes beyond the explicit contract-level, it is about exchange relationship and goodwill. As relationship partners will show benevolence in their actions [4, 22], therefore if the bidder believes the seller will act in the interest of the relationship, it will reduce the uncertainty and perceived risk, and enhance trust.
3.2.2 Reciprocal Effects of Seller Trust and Intermediary Trust
Most of the transactions in online auction are one-off [6]. Resnick and Zeckhauser [35] reported that during their five month eBay data collection period (February – June 1999), 89% of all seller– buyer pairs conducted just one transaction and 98.9% conducted no more than four. A bidder has trust in transacting with a complete stranger in an auction site partly because he/she has trust in that site. Apparently, consumer trust in a particular auction site, so-called Institutional Trust, would enhance the site’ s reputation, leading to repeat visits and customer loyalty. An auction bidder might not deal with the same seller ever again but he/she would return to the same site for future if he or she built up trust in the intermediary (the auction service provider). People who are in the same trading community are relative more trustworthy than outsiders. Moreover, the intermediary can provide some informal or formal controls over both buyers and sellers, to help promote proper behavior. Users trust the intermediary to enforce formal control mechanism which designates the procedures and protocols that monitor and control transactions and punish opportunistic behavior. For example, the intermediary’ s escrow services are used to ensure the delivery of the auction items to buyers and payment to sellers, while the feedback system provides information to users about the trading party’ s performance on past transactions. Thus, even the buyer might not know the seller, he or she may still feel “ safe” in dealing with that seller. This demonstrates that there might be a reciprocal relationship between seller trust and intermediary trust. As Doney and Cannon [17] pointed out that buyers had little knowledge of sellers, therefore, trust in the auction site was likely to have a direct impact on seller trust through a process of “ affect transfer.” Trust in intermediary would evoke affect, and by pairing it with its “ reputation and brand” , would affect trust in seller, or vice versa. Thus, we hypothesize that H1: Trust in Seller will have a reciprocal influence on Trust in Intermediary such that the direct effect of Trust in Intermediary on Trust in Seller is larger than the reverse influence.
3.2.3
3.2.4 Mediating Role of Value in the Relationship between Trust and Purchase Intention
Sirdeshmukh, Singh and Sabol [41] defined perceived value as the consumer’ s perception of the benefits minus the cost of maintaining an ongoing relationship with a trading partner (relationship costs). Social exchange model states that people and organization interact in such a manner so as to maximize their rewards and minimize their costs [38]. Therefore if the buyers perceive the value of auction is high, they are more likely to use it. To be more specific, the buyers will consider the price they paid, the effort they involved and the time they spent and evaluate the benefits (economic and non-economic benefits) of auctioning online to justify whether it is worthwhile to do so. Sirdeshmukh, Singh and Sabol [41] have found that trust creates value by providing relational benefits derived from interacting with a service provider that is operationally competent, benevolent, and problem-solving oriented, by reducing exchange uncertainties and by helping the consumer form consistent and reliable expectations on ongoing relationships with the service provider. Thus, we infer that consumers should demonstrate greater purchase intention under conditions of higher trust that is built via relational exchanges which provide value. Specifically, trust lowers relationship costs, which in turn increases value, which increases purchase intention. Thus, value would partially mediate the relationship between trust and purchase intention.
3.2.5
Asymmetrical Impact of Trust Attributes
Based on the work of Kahneman and Tversky [27] loss-aversion hypotheses 2 and Wyer and Gordon [46] notion of distinctive coding of negative events in memory, we predict negative versus positive perceptions may have differential impact on formation of consumer trust. That is, a negative perception is not simple the absence of a positive perception, but a distinct cognitive construct having its own relationship on trust. Moreover, negative perception on a single attribute may outweigh positive perception on many other attributes combined. The empirical findings of Mittal, Rose and Baldasare [32] supported that a seller’ s negative performance with respect to some attributes had a greater impact on overall satisfaction and repurchase intentions than did positive performance. In addition, Sirdeshmukh, Singh and Sabol [41] also found evidence of contingent asymmetric relationships between trustworthiness dimensions and consumer trust. Therefore, Singh and Sirdeshmukh [40] proposed that distrust (with respect to vendor competence) had a greater effect than trust on prepurchase expectations, and later Sirdeshmukh, Singh and Sabol [41] found evidence of asymmetric relationships between trustworthiness dimensions and consumer trust. Following this 2
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Consumer Trust and Purchase Intention
According to the Theory of Reasoned Action [18] and the Theory of Planned Behavior [3], beliefs affect the person’ s attitudes; attitudes in turn influence behavioral intentions. To the extent that online trust affects consumer attitude towards online auction and the intention to use it, there should be a relationship between online trust and online purchase intention.
The loss aversion built into prospect theory suggests that losses loom larger than gains, that means, one unit loss is weighted more than an equal amount of gain.
line of inquiry, the authors propose that negative and positive trustworthiness attributes, as ascribed to sellers and intermediaries by potential buyers, exert asymmetric effects on both perceived value and purchase intention. Therefore, we hypothesize that
term relationships versus the short-term transaction needs of North America buyers. But since most of the transactions in online auction tend to be one-off, long term buyer-seller relationship is hard to find.
H2: Perceived Value will be affected asymmetrically by attributes of trust. Negative attributes of trust (attributes of distrust) will have greater impact on Perceived Value than positive attributes of the same trust attributes
As people from different cultures show different perceptions on transacting with new partners even with the same sellers who have good reputation, this would influence the intention to purchase online. Thus, we hypothesize that
H3: Online Purchase Intention will be affected asymmetrically by attributes of trust. Negative attributes of trust (attributes of distrust) will have greater impact on Online Purchase Intention than positive attributes of the same trust attributes.
3.2.6
Cultural Influences
Cultures of the buyers influence the way how they perceive the trustworthiness of sellers/intermediary and trust attributes, and also the way how they process and rationalize the external influences in moderating trust building process. Fukuyama [19] viewed trust as the expectation of regular, honest, and cooperative behavior based on commonly shared norms and values. Cultural traits shared by groups or subgroups influence the development of trust [34]. Hofstede [24] defined culture as the collective programming of the mind which distinguished the members of one human group from another, which was represented by the five cultural dimensions, i.e. uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity/femininity, individualism/collectivism, and long/short term orientation on life. The authors perceive that such cultural dimensions will have a profound impact on the way consumers perceive and behave, thus influencing the formation of trust and purchase intention. Therefore, we propose to measure the consumer perception of online auction of two cultural groups American who are characterized as Individualistic and Low Uncertainty Avoidance, and Chinese who are characterized as Collectivistic and High Uncertainty Avoidance [24], in this study.
3.2.6.1 Individualism and Collectivism
Yamagishi and Yamagishi [47] suggested a different effect on trust and risk from individualism-collectivism. Members of individualistic cultures tend to be more self-centered and selfreliant, while members of collectivistic cultures are more concerned with the welfare of ingroups. Individualism promotes a trusting stance and individualists are much more likely to trust others until they are given some reasons not to trust [26]. While in collectivist cultures, individuals belong to in-groups and they are less likely to trust someone who is not part of their in-groups [47]. Those high on collectivism are more likely to base their trust on relationships with first-hand knowledge [26]. Therefore, Chinese buyers have the strongest desire for social bonding and the United States buyers have the weakest desire [45]. In addition, collectivists are more risk averse and less innovative so they would commit to their existing relationships and refrain from new relationships, to minimize the unperceived risk. Thus, exchange relationships with out-group members will only happen in the presence of strong institutional safeguards i.e. strong culture norms and legal sanctions [47], but it is not quite possible to be found in online auction. In contrast, people from the individualistic culture have a high propensity to trust in general and they are more likely to seek out others who have good reputations. It supports with the finding of Abramson and Ai [2] that Chinese buyers need more relational transactions and long
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3.2.6.2 Uncertainty Avoidance
The likelihood of a buyer engaging into online auction also depends on how he/she evaluates the utility of the consequences of the opportunistic behavior, gain from trade (perceived value) and assured outcome. How the bidder evaluates the cost of being cheated and the value of transaction, to certain extent, is directly related to his/her preference on uncertainty avoidance. Uncertainty avoidance does not equal risk avoidance, but it refers to how comfortable people feel toward uncertain or unknown situation. When uncertainty is expressed as risk, it ceases to be a source of anxiety and becomes a source of fear [25]. Some cultures promote well-being by emphasizing the minimization of unpleasant emotions for example by avoiding risks. Like, some Asian philosophies teach detachment to reduce the consequences of negative life-events, while modern western culture appears to promote well-being by emphasizing the maximization of pleasure [39]. Therefore, cultures with high uncertainty avoidance index (UAI) will place high value on assertive outcome whilst cultures with low UAI will place high value of possible positive outcome. High uncertainty avoidance cultures shun ambiguous situation and security is more valued. They are less open on new things and changes, and prefer formal rules, organizations, institutions and relationships, which makes outcome manageable and predicable. Therefore, the perceived value of online auctioning might not outweigh the perceived cost of defection (financial or function loss) in the transaction that will bring negative impact on the purchase intention. Thus, we hypothesize that H4: A stronger influence of asymmetric impact of trustworthiness attributes on Seller and Intermediary Trust will be found in Collectivistic and High UAI cultures than Individualistic and Low UAI cultures. H5: A stronger influence of asymmetric impact of the interrelationship of Online Trust, Perceived Value and Online Purchase Intention will be found in Collectivistic and High UAI cultures than Individualistic and Low UAI cultures.
4. USER REVIEW
A preliminary content analysis of users’ reviews of online auction experiences was utilized to identify the key dimensions on trustworthiness. This process also helps us comprehend the actual users’ experiences and their perception on online auction, in particular, online trust and risk. The authors first located qualified customer evaluation sites. Three selection criteria were established to permit collection of the most representative samples: (1) the number of reviews written by online auction users should be large; (2) customers should be encouraged to post both dissatisfied and satisfied reviews; and (3) the reviews can be assessed publicly or freely. Two U.S.-based sites, epinion.com and gomez.com, were chosen for studying the feedback of the users of US online auction sites.
For the Chinese online auction sites, cmasia.com was chosen which provides e-rating services for Asian Internet community, in addition, we also studied the feedback left in the forum of those respective auction sites. The authors then selected five wellknown online auction sites in US, namely, Amazon, Auctionwatch, eBay, ubid and Yahoo!Auction and five biggest auction sites in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan, namely, eachnet, eBay Taiwan, Yahoo HK, Go2HK and Red-dots. Finally, the authors had collected 517 effective messages from five auction sites in US online sites and 493 effective messages in Chinese online sites in the period of July 1999 to August 2002. By content analyzing these customer reviews, the authors found that the major complaints of buyers are about wrong and defected products, delay or no delivery and inconsistent and fraudulent behavior of sellers. They also did not satisfy with the intermediaries, which do not provide any services in facilitating transactions and ensuring safety environment. Those dissatisfactory experiences affect their recommendations and evaluations on the auction sites. Examples of the message extracted are the followings: “ I think Go2HK needs to improve the member’ s credibility… I suggest Go2HK needs to implement some kinds of protection system for its members.” (refers to “ Perceived Competence of Intermediary) “ Security is so poor that bidders may never receive their items after they send their money. Customer service is a joke, Yahoo will do nothing to stop the fraud being committed by some of their sellers.” (refers to Perceived Competence of Intermediary) “ I was very upset about their lack of consideration for their customers and over-inflated shipping costs” . (refers to Perceived Benevolence of Intermediary) “ I know Ubid is a little shady but this is blatantly false advertising.” (refers to Perceived Integrity of Intermediary) “ People often hype up their product by either intentionally misleading you on the description or telling little white lies about how great it is but it isn’ t.” (refers to Perceived Integrity of Seller) “ In my opinion, I think many of the sellers are fake as well as the items for bid.” (refers to Perceived Integrity of Seller) “ I won’ t buy at Red-dots anymore because the sellers all have another account to push price.” (refers to Perceived Integrity of Seller) “ The seller had an overwhelming positive review record, so I sent the money directly through PayPal. After a month of no communication and no shipment…….Finally, about two weeks later I got a package, and the two items were not what I have ordered.” (refers to Perceived Competence of Seller) “ The seller can cancel an auction at any time… Seller cancels his/her auction if the price is not high enough, even without a reserve price” . (refers to Perceived Benevolence of Seller) Besides, a focus group discussion was hold with the undergraduate students (including auction users and non-auction users) at City University of Hong Kong. The authors interviewed them and collected their opinions and experiences on online auction. They also addressed similar concerns. Such online and offline comments are useful for conceptualizing the constructs and designing the measures used for future empirical study.
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5. CONCLUSION
The authors try to build a conceptual framework to investigate the mechanism that converts consumer trust into value and purchase intention in online auction. This framework adopts a multidimensional conceptualization approach to conceptualize the construct of trustworthiness as perceived integrity, perceived competence and perceived benevolence while consumer trust has two facets which are “ Trust in Seller” and “ Trust in Intermediary” . Perceived Value on online auction is used as a mediating variable in the relationship between Online Trust and Online Purchase Intention. Distinct from prior e-commerce researches on the similar area, we are interested in study the reciprocal relationship of trust in seller and intermediary and the asymmetrical impact on the negative and positive trustworthiness attributes on trust, perceived value and purchase intention across cultures. Heretofore, a preliminary content analysis and a focus group discussion were conducted. The authors are soon planning to run a few field tests to finalize the operationalization of the constructs and to test the viability of our model.
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