Soft trust and mCommerce shopping behaviours

Abstract

Recently, there has been widespread growth of shopping and buying on mobile devices, termed mCommerce. With this comes a need to understand how to best design experiences for mobile shopping. To help address this, we conducted a diary and interview study with mCommerce shoppers who have already adopted the technology and shop on their mobile devices regularly. Our study explores typical mCommerce routines and behaviours along with issues of soft trust, given its long-term concern for eCommerce. Our results describe spontaneous purchasing and routine shopping behaviours where people gravitate to their mobile device even if a computer is nearby. We found that participants faced few trust issues because they had limited access to unknown companies. In addition, app marketplaces and recommendations from friends offered a form of brand protection. These findings suggest that companies can decrease trust issues by tying mCommerce designs to friend networks and known marketplaces. The caveat for shoppers, however, is that they can be easily lured into a potentially false sense of trust.