Identification of main factors affecting trust and determination of their importance in electronic businesses in Iran

TL;DR

This study identifies and ranks key factors influencing trust in Iranian electronic businesses across the purchase stages, highlighting traceability, transaction safety, and product quality as most critical.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into the importance of specific trust factors at each stage of online purchasing in Iran, filling a gap in localized e-commerce trust research.

Findings

Traceability is most important pre-purchase.

Transaction safety and delivery time are crucial during purchase.

Receiving fault-free goods is vital post-purchase.

Abstract

Today, trust has become one of the main concerns of the electronic business in Iran. The role of trust especially in electronic businesses those directly deal with selling physical goods through internet is a lot more evident. Reviewing literature shows that several factors affect establishing of trust in potential customers. Since trust establishment needs to be noticed in each triple stages of an electronic purchase (before, during and finally after purchase). In this study by using field research, the importance of influential factors affecting the potential customers in three stages of an electronic purchase is determined. Based on the results from conducting the research, the certainty of traceability of the purchase with importance factor of 85.97% in pre-purchase stage, safety of transactions and the time of delivery of goods with the importance factor of 85.67% in the middle stage of the purchase and receiving a fault-free and undamaged good with the importance factor of 89.55% in the post purchase stage make up the top three most important factors.