The Determinants of Trust Transfer on Mobile Shopping Decision: Flow Experience as a Moderator

Abstract

Evidence shows that the proportion of mobile shoppers has grown rapidly due to mobile devices’ portability and continuity mobility immediacy and searchability of mobile commerce Several studies discuss the role of trust influencing customers’ mobile shopping intention However which factors affect trust formation and whether trust has an impact on customers’ engagement in mobile shopping deserve further discussion Trust Transfer Theory (TTT) was applied to examine trust transference among physical store e-service and mobile shopping service and whether these three types of trust influence mobile shopping decisions Characteristics of trustworthiness including ability (service quality and website quality) integrity (information transparency and privacy protection) and benevolence (corporate social responsibility and consumer welfare) were tested as antecedents Flow experience was used as the moderator to examine the relationship between trust and mobile shopping decisions An online survey was conducted with 419 valid questionnaires Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyze the data and the results indicated that ability integrity and benevolence can increase customer trust in physical stores and e-service and trust transference exists among different shopping channels; all three types of trust positively influence mobile shopping decision; flow experience significantly moderates the relationship between trust in physical stores and mobile shopping decisions To sum up this study suggests that managers should avoid investments on a singular shopping channel and equally value all the shopping channels improving employee training and shopping procedures to enhance service quality Corporations should also provide an aesthetic shopping website with security and usability for online shoppers and dedicate their efforts to environmentally-friendly and community activities to show corporate social responsibility Furthermore managers should strive for customers’ flow experience so that customers will be willing to adopt mobile shopping in the future

Date of Award	2015 Jul 2
Original language	English
Supervisor	Hsin-Hsin Chang (Supervisor)