Promoting trading partner trust in b2b e-commerce through the use of service level agreements and the establishment of support centres

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to propose ways to increase the people-side trust in business-to-business e-commerce environments. In particular, two mechanisms are proposed: (A) The use of Service Level Agreements, a special form of contract popular in the IT industry, which can be introduced to cover all legal and non-legal requirements of online trading. (B) The establishment of Support Centres, which can act as intermediaries, and which can guarantee the trustworthiness of companies. From a practical research perspective, the work within the framework of the EU - co-funded project "LAURA" is presented. The goal of this project is to set-up adaptive zones of B2B electronic commerce for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) from the Less Favoured Regions of Europe. © 2004 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.