Antecedents and consequences of trust in online product recommendations

Purpose This paper aims to improve understanding of the reasons why people trust the information about product recommendations on social shopping networks of websites, a new e‐commerce method which combines social networking and shopping, and to investigate the impact of the trust on the consumers' intention to purchase products from the online shop of a website. Design/methodology/approach An online survey instrument was developed to gather data, and 1,219 questionnaires were used to test the relationships in the proposed model. Findings The results indicated that perceived ability, perceived benevolence/integrity, perceived critical mass, and trust in a website were four important antecedents of trust in product recommendation in a social networking site. In addition trust in product recommendations can influence the consumers' intention to purchase from the website through increasing their intention to purchase the products. Research limitations/implications The research model demonstrated the importance of trust in product recommendations to online consumers' transaction intention. Practical implications The results of the study showed that trust in product recommendations will influence consumers' purchase intentions. Therefore a social shopping website or the websites transforming into social shopping websites should put more emphasis on ways to establish the virtual communities or social networks which can provide the information about product recommendations that consumers trust. Originality/value The study provides a comprehensive framework of the antecedents and effects of consumers' trust in recommendations in the context of social shopping.

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