Consumers' Initial Trust toward Second-Hand Products in the Electronic Market

Today we are witnessing an increasing popularity of the online used product market. While customer behavior has been studied extensively, that for the used product market is still not well explored. Attracting potential customers in the initial stage of unknown online stores in the used product market is critical and also a practical issue to the retailers. Based on the literature on the role of trust in the electronic market, we develop hypotheses regarding the meditating effect of two different types of initial trust (i.e., toward store and toward product) between the customers and their intention to purchase. An experimental study is designed and tested with 163 college students by developing a forged online retailer selling used notebook computers. Our result shows that two different types of trust exist in the online used product market. The results also show that the initial trusts mediate the relationship between the customers and their willingness to buy used goods from the unknown retailer.