Nowadays the consumer is more and more clever and before buy a product or use a service he wants to understand the company and if the company will do something wrong e.g.: the service quality is bad. The consumer will not trust anymore the company. Since few years two words are use to keep the clients Trust and Trustworthiness. What are those two words. It is usefull to understand them?
Trust
The trust is a combination of successful interactions between the client and the company. It means for the company to show they care about consumers and can resolve their problems if he or she meets one, offer them a good quality of services.
As confirms Bock, Zmud and Lee (2005), trust is an important element in marketing because it plays a huge role in many social and economic interactions. Moreover, this feeling of trust can be improved in a positive way to reinforce and make easier the Decision Making Process according Wu & Chen (2005). It means that as much as the seller can make the consumer comfortable in his purchase decision like sharing with him many information about the product or the service, showing his self-confidence when he is talking about it, it would be easier for the consumer to buy it. It highlights the idea that feeling comfortable and being recognized as a “real consumer” by a brand or a company influence in a good way the act of buying. Therefore, emotions, which are increasing in this kind of situation, make easier the financial transaction.
However, as explains Everard & Galletta (2006), it fundamental to understand that this relationship between the consumer and the seller is only possible in the case of the seller shows that he gets the ability and all the skills when he is selling a product or a service: he needs to share relevant information, advices, make the consumer comfortable. Therefore, he needs to help the creation of this trust. As affirms Coulter and Coulter (2005), the build of the trust has to cover various stages to be perfect: competence, promptness, reliability and customization.
Morever, Doney and Cammon (1997); Garbarino and Johnson (1999), trust can be compared as a strong belief. As describes Chang (2007), this belief gets an impact on the brand, the online website. He wants to underline that when an individual trusts a brand, a website its fame will increase because of the social pressure. It means that the company gets chance that the consumer will speak about it and create the word of mouth. Therefore, the trust can generate profits for the company.
An important point of Trust is helpful to build a relationship with the consumer. As confirms R.C.Mayer and J.H.Davis in the Integration Model Of Organizational Trust, and In the Commitment Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing by R.L.Morgan and Shelby D.hunt Trust is fundamental. However, they highlight the idea that Trust and Relationship are strongly linked. It means that without relationship the Trust cannot be built. Therefore, Trust is reinforced thanks to the consumer who believes each day in the company values and showing that the consumer gets a real identity in the company and pay attention to them (offering gifts, using direct marketing), remember them, interacting with them. Therefore, it means being present in their life without forgetting them.
Communication via the Web has three points of evaluation, as shown on the following diagram.
According to Morgan and Hunt,any E-companies try to increase the trust on their web site, we can defines several important points. First of all, details concerning the organization will be appear (company name, address, logo), including registration data and also ownership information. Visitors need to be able to contact you easily. Lack of obvious mistakes, such as errors in spelling and in well-known facts. And have nothing that does obviously out of the date when the page is clearly older can reduce trust. If an organisation has a well-know presence beyond the web, which will be greatly affect the visitors’ views of its website. But if the organisation is not well known outside its home region, it’s local; reputation can’t impress visitors elsewhere in the world. Giving plenty of details are necessary for the online selling, Pictures, size, weight, and price, country of manufacture, shipping costs, and returns policy - everything a customer might want to know.
Trustworthiness
The trustworthiness is an important value for all kind of business. The Consumer need it when he or she deals with the company. The meaning of trusthworthiness is bigger than trust: if you said this company is trustworthiness, it means that this company is trusted. This idea is underlined by Sheinman,H (2008). Therefore, trustworthiness means promises and how companies act with these promises, what is the level of commitment with these promises. Moreover, it gives the promising power and the audience can measure it in two different ways:
1- Promise keeping
2- Promises breaking rules
It underlines that it is a big problem for the company in case of failure because the penalty will be untrusted in other world (untrust worthiness) and it will be hard to do promises again if they lost the trust or break promises. It will be difficult to get the ability to gain trsutworthiness again. This idea is reinforced to the bigger problem of E-business which has lost trustworthiness. Therefore, losing the power of promising, the sector will loose of the relation with the thired parties according to Sheinman,H (2008). It is considered as an ethical case especially when you are dealing with people when they are believing in your trustworthiness and you should treat them right and concerned according to N. Rajasekar, K.G. Nalina (2008).
Moreover, trustworthiness is considered as one of the most important element which considered component as your brand equity according To Dan S. Chiaburu ,. Audrey S. Lim (2008). Trustworthiness means the consumer place confidence in the firm, the communication and as to whether the firm actions would be in consumer interests.
The developed countries depend on the Internet and one of the risk is in the transaction . That is why the companies should more and more consider trustworthiness. Nowadays the company will be judged by the customers according to the trustworthy, they can become an old known company if there is no enough actions done by them for the customer. Theses actions will reflect the company credibility. This as a result a reaction by The customer. According to there actions the company can determine the customer's trustworthiness. The thing is trustworthiness come from true characteristics of the company itself, it does not come from just promises.
A huge number of customers using the Internet when purchasing goods and services over the Web will appreciate trustworthiness specially customers who have serious privacy concerns, so they will be willing to provide private information to the company which trustworthiness is one of its characteristics , however winning the public trust is the main obstacle to continued growth in e-businesses.
So Trust and Trustworthiness are two words that the companies must keep in mind. After there is no one which is better than other. First the company must build the relathionship so trust. Then when this period is finish this is the time of Trustworthiness. After The trust can be the most important, because it is the first step of the interaction between a company and the client. So without Trust there is no Trustworthiness.
REFERENCES:
Tsai, M T., Wei Chin, C., Chen, C C.(2010) “The Effect of Trust Belief and Salesperson’s Expertise On Consumer’s Intention to Purchase Nutraceuticals: Applying The Theory of Reasoned Action” in Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal (2010)
Weiwei Yuan, A., Guan, D., Lee, Y-K., Lee, S.a, Jin Hur, S. (2010) Improved trust-aware recommender system using small-worldness of trust networks in Knowledge-Based Systems V23 pp 232-238
Rajasekar, N., Nalina, K.G. (2008) ‘’Measuring Customer-Based Brand Equity in Durable Goods Industry'' in Journal of Marketing & Communication;, V4 (1), p48-58
Chiaburu, Dan S., S. Lim, A. (2008) ‘’Manager Trustworthiness or Interactional Justice? Predicting Organizational Citizenship Behaviours’’ in Journal of business ethics. 83:3. pp.453-467. 2008 (12) (1670)
Sheinman,H. (2008) ‘’Promise as Practice Reason’’ in acta anal v 23 pp 287-318
Mayer, R., Davis, J. and Schoorman, D. (1995) ‘An Integrative Model of Organisational Trust’, in
Morgan, R. and Hunt, S. (1994) ‘The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing’, Journal of Marketing, V58 (3), 20 - 39
Do you like this article? Share It!
4 comments to "Trust Vs Trustworthiness"
Number of Visitor
Anonymous says:
The article can be good. But I would like to know if the trust and Trustworthiness become the part of the strategy, how they will arrive to build it to be competitive.
Turn the blogosphere says:
Good evening!
Thanks for visiting our blog and leaving relevant comment.
Trust and Trusworthiness are key elements and obviously generate the success or the failure of a company.
The main point which helps to build this strategy is the quality of the service or good offered by the company. It means that the company has to be honest about what it sells and is able to satisfy consumers needs. To be trusted, a company has to be "translucent" about everything: information on their website, prices of their products/services... They have to respect their own rules and show it to consumers.
Moreover, people need to see that the company gets a strong team and works in a good atmosphere. The team (sellers, employees, managers..) represents the company and are in contact with consumers. Consumers need to understand and feel that in this company, people are serious, communicate between them, know how to manage any trouble. It is also a factor which influences the trust and help consumers to believe the values of a company.
Furthermore, communicating with your target audience and observing what happens on the market will help a company to build this strategy. It is very easy to loose the trust of your consumers because any company is protected by a crisis. Therefore, the company has to communicate any kind of information and keep listening to its target audience even in a crisis and adapt its products/services according consumers needs but also trends on the market.
Hope we have answered your question!
Anonymous says:
at the first glance I didn't know what is the difference between trust and trustworthiness, however it was nice to read this topic, but the question is ,do you think that companies are willing to keep putting some of its resources to renew its credibility, or it is a first time shot only?
Turn the blogosphere says:
I think the first impression are the most important like in the buisness when you meet someone we say the first 10 are the most important, 10 seconde before check the hand, 10 first words Etc so it is the same with the client and company. The company must do all is best to do it during the first contact between the company and him. But if it does'nt work the first time or if the Trust is cut during the relathionship is building the company can re-build it. E.g.: Companies have bad image brand on the Internet because of the bloggers, the company can try to leave comment on the blog or invite the people to speak about company's problems.