Electronic Commerce for Competitiveness of Food Networks: The Issue of Trust

E-commerce and its potentials for efficiency in transactions offers important potentials for the competitiveness of food chains. However, existing e-commerce solutions lack trust generating elements to make e-commerce transactions trustworthy for food companies. To be able to exploit the potentials of e-commerce for efficiency and competitiveness in food chains, trust generation in electronic transaction environments is essential. This papers develops trust elements for electronic transactions in food chains. First, the hierarchy of trust elements based on expert judgments operating in agri-food chains was explored. Three categories of trust factors were elaborated, namely: “share of significances and motivations”, “reliability and reputation”, and “integration availability and non-opportunistic behaviour”. Furthermore, within the above mentioned categories, six trust specific factors were identified. The Analytic Hierarchy Process technique was adopted to investigate and evaluate the relevance of the considered components. In this way it was possible to define a priority between the identified elements on their capacity to stimulate trust in B2B relations in a specific context. The hierarchical model defined in this way seems capable to assign a priority order to the elements inspire trust during e-trade relationship in the agrifood chains. Further investigations are needed to test the validity of the construct into a real business environment.