Information Technology and Management 1 (2000) 45–71 45 Consumer trust in an Internet store * Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa a , Noam Tractinsky b and Michael Vitale c a Department of Management Science and Information Systems, CBA 5.202, B6500, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1175, USA E-mail: sjarvenpaa@mail.utexas.edu b Industrial Engineering and Management, Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel E-mail: noamt@bgumail.bgu.ac.il c Melbourne Business School, The University of Melbourne, Carlton 3053, Victoria, Australia E-mail: m.vitale@mbs.unimelb.edu.au The study reported here raises some questions about the conventional wisdom that the Internet creates a “level playing field” for large and small retailers and for retailers with and without an established reputation. In our study, consumers recognized differences in size and reputation among Internet stores, and those differences influenced their assessments of store trustworthiness and their perception of risk, as well as their willingness to patronize the store. After describing our research methods and results, we draw some implications for Internet merchants. 1. Introduction Internet commerce is claimed to reduce the advantages of scale of large retailers, to lower the costs of entering international consumer markets, and perhaps to reduce the strength of established retailers by allowing new merchants to enter and leave quickly [62,24]. But these speculations appear to overlook the importance of the rela- tionship between the consumer and the merchant in this new form of direct marketing. Quelch and Klein [49, p. 70] note that “Trust is a critical factor in stimulating pur- chases over the Internet, especially at this early stage of commercial development”. Keen [37] argues that the most significant long-term barrier for realizing the potential of Internet marketing to consumers will be the lack of consumer trust, both in the merchant’s honesty and in the merchant’s competence to fill Internet orders. Trust is a critical factor in any relationship in which the trustor (e.g., consumer) does not have direct control over the actions of a trustee (e.g., merchant or store), the decision is important, and the environment is uncertain [20,44]. Building on the social psychology and industrial marketing tradition, we define “trust” as “a trustor’s expectations about the motives and behaviors of a trustee” [21, p. 37]. Since the inception of commercial activity on the Web, security has been per- ceived by some to be a significant barrier to the emergence of a consumer mass market * Partial funding for this study was provided by the University of Melbourne and the Melbourne Business School.  Baltzer Science Publishers BV