Trust as the Key to Loyalty in Business-to-Consumer Exchanges

Trust, as a key factor in business relationship, cannot be bought or ordered. Also, trust cannot be replaced through control mechanisms. Rather, it is a fragile psychological construct which develops through mainly intransparent reasons. Trust research is, therefore, vital for an analysis of business to consumer relations. The present work is connected with the comprehensive and long continuing scientific examination of trust in and between organizations as well as between organizations and customers. The banking industry serves a field of research in which trust plays a key role. The question is to find out how banks can strengthen customers' trust. The work especially focuses on the question whether customers trust their bank due to performance and service quality or reputation (reputation being defined as the result of experienced and approved performance quality). On the other hand, the work also deals with the possibility that trust depends on entirely different reasons like the trust propensity of each individual. Thus, organizations can only partially influence their customers' trust by their own measures. Based on these aspects, the author formulates the central research question of her work: Which trust building measures should the appropriate policy of a bank consist of? This is a very challenging question as it includes existing long-range trends and traditions as well as experience, publicly communicated values as well as concrete transaction and service experiences of customers including their personal historical backgrounds. The author seeks a comprehensive empirical approach and successfully applies this method to her research question.