A research on the effects of the different scopes of trust toward customer loyalty: An empirical study between Taiwan and China

Many marketing researchers pointed out that the trust of the customer towards a company and the companyʹs representatives can influence customer loyalty. In addition, the trust of customers towards a big environment market, for example, their trust towards the standard departments who formulate the market and professional supervisors of the market, also affects the trust between the customer and the service provider during transactions. This study constructed an integrated causal relationship model between the different levels of the trust theory model (including broad scope trust and narrow scope trust) of Grayson et al. (2008) and customer loyalty. This study used the direct selling distributors of Taiwan and China as subjects. It used questionnaire survey and Structure Equation Model to compare the difference between the two countries. The results of both countries showed that system trust increases customer loyalty through interpersonal trust. Furthermore, the generalized trust of Taiwan has a greater effect toward firm-specific trust and interpersonal trust than of China but the effect of Taiwanʹs system trust is lower than the effect of Chinaʹs system trust.