Customer Characteristics’ Influence on Online Trust in Developing Countries: An Examination of Confidence Level

The advent of E-commerce opens an opportunity for fostering an environment that promotes the globalisation of markets throughout the world, especially those in developing countries like Indonesia. The importance of trust as a key facilitator of E-commerce is increasingly being recognized in academic and practitioner communities. However, empirical research in this area has been overwhelmed by contradictory conceptions of the trust construct, while inadequate attention has been paid to the influence of trust constructs on E-commerce development in different cultural environments and settings. Within these constructs, a number of consumer characteristics – such as gender and age – potentially might affect trust levels. It is therefore this initial exploratory study examines whether consumer trust appears to vary by gender, and age on E-commerce development in Indonesia. A series of paired sample t-tests and ANOVA were carried out to determine whether there was any significant difference between levels of confidence (or any significant difference in the expected problems) between Indonesian and non-Indonesian websites. It is the author’s intention to investigate other characteristics in future studies.