From the Sociology of Trust towards a Sociology of 'e-trust' 1

This paper focuses on the importance of trust in business-to-consumer e-commerce. Divided into three sections the paper first asks the question of why trust is important to the development and implementation of e-commerce and suggests some of the areas where user trust is specifically important. The second offers a view of trust developed using sociological theory and interactionism and looks at how this can inform our understanding of e-commerce users. Finally, the paper suggests a number of nontechnical ways in which successful e-commerce retailers build trust and offer potential for further exploration.