Is the Web Marketing Mix Sustainable in China? The Mediation Effect of Dynamic Trust

Trust plays an important role between companies and customers in the online shopping environment because of the anonymous transaction environment and the advantage of virtual property. The most rapidly developing trend in Chinese e-business may come from Guanxi, a Chinese term for social trust. In this study, we define Guanxi as the dynamic trust process in the social decisions or activities of the Chinese. With increasing global attention on the outstanding development of Chinese e-business, it would be worthwhile to analyze the dynamic trust process of social e-commerce customers in close combination with the social network. The statistical results obtained using structural equation modeling (SEM) show the importance of trust in a social e-commerce context. The direct positive relationship between the components of the web marketing mix and purchase intention is partially mediated by initial trust and ongoing trust, while initial trust only partially affects purchase intention through ongoing trust.