The Role of Reputation on Trust and Loyalty : A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Tablet E-Tailing

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to empirically examine the role of online retailer's website reputation on tablet commerce and to compare the trust arbitration between reputation and loyalty in two cultures - Finland and Nigeria. Data was collected from Finland and Nigeria, using purposive and snowball sampling methods. This article uses Structural Equation Modelling and mediation analysis. The results reveal that the reputation of online retailer's website is not a direct determinant of loyalty for online shopping while trust colligates with ease of use. The effect of an online retailer's website reputation is stronger in Nigeria than in Finland and trust is a strong predictor of ease of use in Finland than Nigeria. Furthermore, trust fully mediates the effect of reputation on loyalty in Finland and partially mediates the effect of reputation and loyalty in Nigeria. The implication of the result on existing and future managers were discussed with future direction.