The Effects of Relationship Commitment and Trust on Business to Consumer Electronic Commerce - The Case of Taiwan

Abstract

Electronic commerce has gained strong momentum across various industry sectors since the release of the commercial browser of Netscape. However, the sharp meltdown of dot com companies in the past three years inspires us to investigate the causes of failures and the factors of success. We postulated that there is a lack of relationship commitment and trust among the electronic commerce partakers. This paper focuses on the business to consumer segment of the electronic commerce regarding the effects of relationship commitment and trust. After surveying more than 250 online consumers in Taiwan, we found that the commitment and trust factors play vital role in customer retention that support our hypotheses.