Inexperience and experience with online stores: the importance of TAM and trust

An e-vendor's website inseparably embodies an interaction with the vendor and an interaction with the IT website interface. Accordingly, research has shown two sets of unrelated usage antecedents by customers: (1) customer trust in the e-vendor and (2) customer assessments of the IT itself, specifically the perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use of the website as depicted in the technology acceptance model (TAM). Research suggests, however, that the degree and impact of trust, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use change with experience. Using existing, validated scales, this study describes a free-simulation experiment that compares the degree and relative importance of customer trust in an…