A New Model for Measuring Customer Utility Trust in Online Auctions

Reports from the US Federal Bureau of investigation have indicated a lot of unethical activities taking place on the internet environments. Despite some technical challenges, ethical related complaints have elicited studies on trust in online commercial transactions like auctioneering. By looking closely on issues that are related to online trust, this study has developed a model that can be used to ascertain trust levels in various websites. The trust issues taken into consideration are Industry Reputation (Ri), Website Reputation (Wi), E-loyalty (Le), Price Premiums (Pp), Social Network (Sn), Value of Good (Vg), Ease of Use (Eu) and Company Satisfactory Transactions (St). In this respect, the level of trust in an auctioneering website has been equated to one’s utility. Presumably, if one derives satisfaction from more goods at the company, it is evident that his trust level will be higher. The model has been found to be of good reliability and validity in measuring trust levels in a survey in this study.