Relationship between seller attributes, trust and repurchase intention in e-marketplaces

Relação entre atributos do vendedor, confiança e intenção de recompra em e-marketplaces

Abstract

Purpose:  This research aims to analyze antecedents of consumer trust and repurchase intention in sellers who operate on e-marketplaces.

Originality/value:  E-marketplaces are expanding worldwide, acting as intermediaries in buying and selling products and services on the Internet. In this context, few studies have sought to identify factors that lead consumers to buy on e-marketplaces, with trust being identified as the main influencer. However, the factors associated with third-party sellers in e-marketplaces and their impact on consumers’ purchasing intentions is relatively unknown in the literature.

Design/methodology/approach:  We study four important attributes associated with third-party sellers in e-marketplaces identified in the literature, namely, customer-generated evaluation, perceived price, product delivery, and information quality. The proposed model was tested with 470 Brazilian consumers from different e-marketplaces through structural equation modeling based on the partial least squares method.

Findings:  The study concluded that the four tested antecedents influence consumers’ trust in sellers, with information quality being the main predictor. We also confirmed that trust remains a fundamental antecedent of repurchase intention in third-party sellers in e-marketplaces, as well as the frequency of consumers’ purchases on these online platforms and their previous experience with the third-party store.

Keywords:
e-marketplace; e-commerce; trust; continuity of use; repurchase intention