How Do We Build Trust into E-commerce Web Sites?

Trust is a subjective, user-centric, context-dependent concept, and is thus difficult to define universally. On the Internet, several factors make trust more difficult to build, explaining why some successful brick-and-mortar retail chains have been unable to translate their reputation to the virtual platform the Web offers. Researchers in many fields have been interested in how to build trust in e-commerce sites. To address this issue, the authors reviewed the available literature on the topic, examining 28 relevant publications in depth to identify relationships among factors that impact trust.