Using image to foster business to consumer online trust

Much of the latest research on business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce has focused on ways of building trust through cues that encourage consumers to purchase through online since it suffers from the lack of face to face interpersonal exchanges that enhance trust behaviour in conventional commerce. To bridge the human interaction dilemma, an extensive laboratory based experiment was conducted to assess the trust of consumers using four online vendors' websites. This paper addresses the issues and findings of a study that uses Western and Saudi images as well as video clips to mimic customer support in increasing the behavioural purchasing trust of the online vendor. The findings from the study clearly highlight that images have an imperative role to play in increasing the trust of online consumers with Saudi images playing a pivotal role in increasing this kind of trust.