Food supply networks: trust and e-business.

Chapter 8 (Page no: 160)

The creation of trust in e-business cross-border transactions in food supply networks.

Trust in traditional business situations is usually established by various means, for example through face-to-face meetings or reliability of business partners. But in e-business, especially when seeking new customers and aiming to start sustainable relationships, trust has to be generated in other ways. In this chapter, 22 features related to trust are tested, from product-related attributes such as quality management (QM) certificates and company-related attributes like complaint management systems to market-related attributes such as information about legal issues. In the first part of this study, experts from the food sector evaluated these 22 trust features. They had to assess how much these trust features would improve the chances of a prospective client initiating a first contact with the seller, or how much the features would help to buy a product from the company in question. In the second part, the interviewees were asked to select directly those trust features that they found most likely to indicate trustworthiness from a list of graphical prototypes. The study was carried out in the following countries: Austria, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Greece, Spain, the USA, Brazil and Turkey. In total, the e-trust consortium partners collected 89 data sets. Whether a product is purchased or not mainly depends on whether there is independent proof of its quality (QM certification) and on how detailed the description and specifications of the product are. Certification is a very important feature in creating trust. Warranties, tracking systems and product specifications increase trust and the probability of deals eventually being made. To reach new customers, comprehensive contact information is a must. For all features it can be assumed that including them in an e-commerce application increases the likelihood of establishing contact with new customers rather than increasing the probability of sales. In general, customers perceive electronic purchases as more risky than conventional purchases. There are different findings among the various sectors (grain, fruit and vegetables, meat and olive oil), but because of the sample size the results obtained should be seen as first hypotheses rather than representative results. The overall ranking of trust features was in line with the experts' probability evaluation. Generally speaking, these features (QM certificates, contact information, specifications/description of the product and warranties) should not be omitted from a business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce application and should, indeed, be placed prominently at the top of the opening page.

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