Distrust in traditional and electronic commerce: A study on consumer’ distrustful profile

Abstract

The growing skepticism which consumer evaluates sales activities implemented by companies is an important problem that reduces, and even eliminate, the effectiveness of strategies designed to build trust and, hence, consumer’s satisfaction and loyalty intentions to the company. This paper addresses the problem of consumer distrust by incorporating distrust as a distinct construct than trust. For that, considering the demographic characteristics and personality traits and values of a sample of 409 subjects, a distrustful consumer profile will be provided to companies; either they operate in the traditional or the online channel, what is key information to effectively adapt their business strategies.