Understanding online customer repurchasing intention and the mediating role of trust – an empirical investigation in two developed countries

Abstract

Although e-commerce adoption and customers’ initial purchasing behavior have been well studied in the literature, repeat purchase intention and its antecedents remain understudied. This study proposes a model to understand the extent to which trust mediates the effects of vendor-specific factors on customers’ intention to repurchase from an online vendor. The model was tested and validated in two different country settings. We found that trust fully mediates the relationships between perceived reputation, perceived capability of order fulfillment, and repurchasing intention, and partially mediates the relationship between perceived website quality and repurchasing intention in both countries. Moreover, multi-group analysis reveals no significant between-country differences of the model with regards to the antecedents and outcomes of trust, except the effect of reputation on trust. Academic and practical implications and future research are discussed.

Keywords:

• repurchasing intention
• trust
• e-commerce
• structural equation modeling

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Israr Qureshi

About the authors

Israr Qureshi is an assistant professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University; earned his Ph.D. at the University of Western Ontario, 2008. His thesis investigated the influence of computer-mediated communication on social capital. Additional areas of interest are social computing and ecommerce. His earlier research has appeared in MIS Quarterly.

Yulin Fang

Yulin Fang is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong. He earned his Ph.D. at Ivey Business School. His current research is focused on knowledge management, virtual teams, electronic commerce, and open source software projects. His research has appeared in major IS and management journals.

Elaine Ramsey

Elaine Ramsey is a lecturer in the Department of Business, Retail and Financial Services at the University of Ulster. Her main research interests relate to the adoption and diffusion of ICT's among SMEs and the inherent issues relative to e-commerce deployment at the B2C web interface.

Patrick McCole

Patrick McCole is a lecturer in Management at Queen's University Belfast. Patrick gained his Ph.D. from the University of Ulster in 2002. He has published in various peer-reviewed journals on topics relating to the role of trust in online buying behavior and e-business in SMEs.

Patrick Ibbotson

Patrick Ibbotson is a senior lecturer within the Department of Business, Retail and Financial Services at the University of Ulster. His main research interests relate to the impact of E-Business on SMEs and issues relating to assimilation of new technologies, skills development, and internationalization, including the role of government support.

Deborah Compeau

Deborah Compeau is professor of MIS at the Richard Ivey Business School, The University of Western Ontario. Her research focuses on the individual user of information technologies, from a social cognitive perspective. In particular, she seeks to understand what organizations can do to facilitate adoption of and learning about IT.