Trust as suggested by Rampet et al (1985) can be associated with interaction and past experiences while (Boss, 1978:Zand1972) defines trust as the willingness to take risk and not necessarily taking risk .While some other authors feel that trust could be associated with experiences that develops and originates over time.
There are attributes to trust which are credibility, reliability, consistency and communication. Is the organisation credible in terms of its reputation? Reliability is the when an organisation says it would do something do they really perform their duties.

Consistency is providing the same high standard of service throughout the organisation. Communication is keeping contact customers either by mails, phone calls and newsletters. The above factors can build trust within an organisation.
Trustworthiness could be linked with the trustee who is the party that needs to be trusted. Trustworthiness according to Crawford (2009) stated that trustworthiness in online businesses is anything that could be linked to the authenticity of the internet. Most researchers disagree with the theory due to the fact that anyone can do or say anything on the internet without permission.

In a B2B context trustworthiness might not work effectively if done online as a result of the distance between the buyer and the supplier as some form of verification are needed for both parties before trust can be applied (Ann Arbor, 2000.) There are three factors that could be associated to trustworthiness which are benevolence, ability and integrity (Olson, G. M. 2000).

Ability in trustworthiness could be seen as the various characteristics or skills that an organisation needs to create to influence a particular area of work. For example an individual that has a particular skill in the marketing department might have little or no experience in the HR department in this situation the individual would be allowed to carry out various tasks in the marketing department but not be trusted to carry out the task of the HR department which might be the recruiting aspect.

Integrity as suggested by Mc Fall (1987) could be categorized as personal and moral integrity. Personal is when a customer has adhered to the rules of the organisation that is considered acceptable and if these rules do not seem appropriate to the customer then the organisation would be measured to have integrity which can be seen as moral integrity. Some organisations could be considered to have a low or high integrity this could be due to lack of consistency.

Benevolence in trustworthiness is an important role in the ability for the party to be trusted to do something that would be beneficial or good to the trusting party which is the (trustee) apart from the main motive of making profit.
If it is an offline or online organisation /company that either delivers services or sells product. It is the ability of the organisation to deliver extraordinary service to the customers by attending to their needs without expecting an extrinsic reward.

Building trust and trustworthiness in an online environment is not as easy as in the off line environment. Trust needs the touch feel aspect (Judith. s Olson et.al, 2000), the phrase “people buy people” which is so often used in off line sales environments denotes the importance of the touch and feels aspect in building trust.

A survey conducting in the USA (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2000.) carried out to ascertain what people felt about building trust or trusting someone over an online environment as compared to face to face interaction. People were asked how safe they felt trusting information they received via email, telephone and face to face. The online environment scored low as most respondents acknowledged that the feel touch element made them trust people more and although hearing a voice over the telephone also helped in building trust.

With privacy and identity being pivotal focal points (Chaffey and smith 2008) in online environments, it is also these factors that help build trust hence allowing consumers to take perceived and non-perceived risks. (Boss, 1978:Z and 1972).

So how do we build trust and trustworthiness and why is it important in online environments? How a website looks is a very important in building trust, remembering that our websites speak volumes of who we are and what type of business we are. What consumers see on websites helps induce them into taking the perceived risk that then leads to trust. (Kohl, Fichman and kraut 2009). Easy access to information and help points are key elements in building trust.

Communication is key in building trust(Morgan & hunt), hence setting up communication channels either by showing a physical address of the company, telephone number (preferable landline) and email addresses and where if possible faces of people that are behind the company. Having these aspects and more will help customers feel not only safe but assured that if they are faced with a challenge they can get help. Toyota during its crisis, managed to set up an online help centre where customers would ask questions on what steps they needed to take if their cars were affected and they would get answers. The idea was set on building trust which had been perceived to be in danger. Where trustworthiness is viewed as being able to keep consumers that trust us, one would ask how best we can ensure that these consumers are managed.

Customer relationship management (CRM) looks at ways of managing our current portfolio through communicating with them and continuously improvements (Kaizen continuous improvements) on our service e.g. security and transparency, in so doing the company is building on trustworthiness. Lloyd’s tsb during their crisis in 2009 engaged in a communication strategy with its customers in a way to build trustworthiness. They engaged in communication campaigns through adverts that which featured that they were voted the safest bank in the UK.






HSBC in a bid to build trustworthiness with its online customers because they were fully aware that the general public were sceptical on security issues pertaining to online banking, however as highlighted in the video (below) they created an advert that would reinforce their security in a bid to lure more people into trusting and using online banking.


HSBC Advert-Why Trust online banking



Many online companies including eBay and Amazon use feedback forms and star ratings from buyers (consumers) in a way to help profile their trust, trustworthiness and transparency of the services that they offer.


In Conclusion we agree trust and trustworthiness are fundamental in the online environment, these aspects still prove to be difficult to attain in a noisy online environment due to the lack of the feel touch element. (Judith. S Olson, et.al 2000). With almost zero to non regulation on the internet, many people can pose as impersonators of other companies by creating similar websites to that of the original company for example United Airlines have an impersonated website www.united.com and it is people like this that make it very difficult for trust and trustworthiness to be attained. With majority of companies using rewards to attain trust one the questions Can trust be bought through rewards? Is loyalty as sign of trustworthiness? The attributes of trust and trustworthiness form the backbone to the importance of trust and trustworthiness in an online environment.



References
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