Consumer Trust Building on CBEC Platforms: The Perspective of Product Authenticity Assurance Mechanisms

Abstract

In light of a growing interest in cross-border e-commerce, this study proposes a conceptual framework unraveling the consumer trust-building process on the cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) platform. Given consumers’ concern about the authenticity of imported products, this study is grounded on signaling theory to understand consumer trust in the CBEC platform from the institutional mechanisms perspective. Through conducting a qualitative study with 24 in-depth interviews with consumers who had had shopping experiences on cross-border e-commerce platforms, we extracted the key components of the perceived effectiveness of product authenticity assurance mechanisms (PEAAM) and the boundary conditions of its effect on the consumer trust-building process. Future work is illustrated and some important implications for theory and practice are discussed.