Fast Food Industry in Hk

ct cross-channel effects between online and offline retailing. Theoretical contributions discuss multi-channel retailing and demand further empirical work to analyze how the use of multiple channels affect a firm and its customers [Gallaugher 2002, Goersch 2003, Gulati and Garino 2000, Steinfield 2002, Stone, Hobbs and Khaleeli 2002].

Numerous empirical studies suggest trust as one of the most decisive antecedents of consumers’ purchase intentions at Internet-only retailers [Grabner-Kräuter and Kaluscha 2003]. We refer to trust as “individual-level internalization of norms of reciprocity, which facilitates collective action by allowing people to take risks and to trust that fellow citizens will not take advantage of them” [Grabner-Kräuter and Kaluscha 2003, p. 672]. Using multivariate models, the studies suggest how the perception of certain variables influences consumers’ trust and willingness to buy at Internet-only retailers. However, only very few of these studies explore antecedents of trust in a multi-channel scenario. Stewart [2003] used experimental analyses to measure how users react to a picture of a physical store shown on a website. She introduced the antecedents perceived interaction and perceived business tie and found evidence that people transfer trust from the traditional shopping channel to a Web-based organization. Milliman and Fugate [1988] also found that trust may be transferred from different kinds of sources (e.g. from an organization to an individual salesman).

The literature review indicates that more detailed and actionable antecedents of trust supporting consumers’ trust transfer from physical stores to the Internet are required. Therefore, well-known studies exploring antecedents and consequences of consumer trust in an Internet-only context have been analyzed in order to find possible antecedents that could be tested in the multi-channel domain.

Jarvenpaa, Tractinsky and Vitale [2000] developed an Internet trust model that tested...