Consumer Trust and Online Information Privacy

Getting consumers to disclose their personal information is an essential first step for Internet businesses that choose to pursue a niche marketing strategy. Previous research has examined how the reward preferences and privacy concerns of consumers may affect their disclosure tendency. However, it is not known how key characteristics pertaining to Internet businesses, such as consumer trust, may affect disclosure tendency. Based on the results obtained from a survey, this study found that consumer trust in Internet businesses can facilitate disclosure tendency. Moreover, consumer trust can suppress the reward preferences and privacy concerns of consumers, thereby reducing the costs that Internet businesses need to incur in collecting personal information from consumers.