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Top1. Introduction
In china, internet has enjoyed a rapid growth in customer base, yet according to the survey conducted by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) in June 2009, only 25.5 percent of internet users purchase online in China (Efraim, Wang, & Zhang, 2002). The over-internet-distrust will impede the popularity of Internet usage. As a form of social relationship in human society, trust is an effective mechanism in reducing complexity and uncertainty of social environment (Feng, 2006). Due to E-commerce’s high uncertainty, high degree of informationasymmetry, anonymity, lack of control and potential opportunism when compared with traditional business activities, online trust has become one of the crucial elements that determine the development of online transactions and E-commerce (Gefen, 2000; Hoffman, Novak, & Peralta, 1999). Therefore, a lot of researchers in E-commerce related fields from home and abroad has been focusing on study of online trust. Currently, learning from Psychology, Sociology, Management, Science, Economics, Marketing and other disciplines, the major study method of online trust is to combine the particularity of E-commerce System to build online trust theory based on general trust, to analyze related elements that affect trust and making hypothesis and empirical research. Business-to-Customer (B2C) is a major mode of E-commerce, and the research about trust of B2C has been attached significant importance to Jøsang, Ismail, and Boyd (2007) in related studies. At present, the research mainly focuses on analyzing one aspect of relevant B2C E-commerce components—consumers’ direct perceived trust and initial trust (Kim, Song, Braynov, & Rao, 2005; Koufaris & William, 2004; Krauter & Kaluscha, 2003; Lee & Turban, 2001; Lu & Zhou, 2005; Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995). Nevertheless, recommendation from mature consumers still plays an extremely crucial role in enhancing trust of new consumers, no matter in real Internet promotion or E-commerce development. This impact is further strengthened in China, a country whose cultural tradition emphasizes on social relationships and face to face transactions, yet with an unsound trust system.
Based on fuzzy analytic hierarchy process, the dissertation proposes a recommended trust evaluation method in B2C E-commerce. First of all, on the basis of current research results, through analyzing thoroughly about factors affecting online trust in B2C E-commerce system from a perspective of consumers, goods, online companies and their websites, technology as well as human environment and so forth, the consumers’ individual trust evaluation system is established. As for a new consumer, using trust evaluations of multiple mature consumers that he/she is familiar with, the study adopts fuzzy analytic hierarchy process to build composite recommended trust evaluation method. At last, the proposed recommended trust evaluation method is applied to evaluate recommended trust of some real B2C online shopping. It simulates the process of trust evaluation of a new consumer and illustrates the validity of the proposed recommended trust evaluation method. Compared with statistical theory based on online trust evaluation methods (Koufaris & William, 2004; Krauter & Kaluscha, 2003; Lee & Turban, 2001; Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995) the proposed one in this article has three advantages as follows: to begin with, the new method is more in line with actual E-commerce transactions in its simulation of the recommended trust evaluation to new individual consumers. Moreover, the new method is more consumer-targeted than statistical methods in that it effectively integrates distinctive trust evaluations of individual consumers. Last but not least, the new one enables a reasonable conversion between language and scoring evaluation, thus gaining objective language assessment.