The role of Security, Design and Content factors on customer trust in mobile commerce

Abstract

Building customer trust is a complex process that involves business and technology practices. Gaining customer trust in mobile commerce is a particular daunting task and plays a major influence on a customer's decision making behavior. A trusted website can provide mobile commerce with powerful competitive advantages. Various factors influence the complex process of engendering customer trust in mobile commerce websites. Evaluating those factors is important in decision making of selecting appropriate online shopping website. This study focuses on Security, Design and Content factors that influence the customers' trust in mobile commerce websites. The objectives of this paper are to reveal the real importance level of trust factors on customers' trust and decision making in selecting the appropriate trusted website. To achieve the objectives of this study, Analytic Network Process (ANP) from the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approaches and fuzzy logic from Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches are used. By considering interrelationships among the trust factors, ANP is employed for selecting the appropriate website for mobile commerce. Then, using fuzzy set theory, a Fuzzy Inferences System (FIS) is developed for revealing the real importance level of factors. The outcome of the proposed decision-making system helps shopping websites managers and service providers to ascertain the trust level of their websites and adequately allow them to improve the website quality.