Understanding the consumer's online merchant selection process: The roles of product involvement, perceived risk, and trust expectation

• Consumer’s trust expectation is a predictor of intention to buy from an e-tailer.
• Situational involvement has positive impact on all components of perceived risk.
• Only product performance risk is positively related to consumer’s trust expectation.
• Situational involvement is positively related to consumer’s trust expectation.

This article provides, through a survey of 295 college students, an empirical analysis of the effects of situational involvement, perceived risk and trust expectation on the consumer's choice of an online merchant. We conceptualized perceived risk as a multi-component construct, and examined the relationships between the individual risk components and the other variables in the model under consideration. First and foremost, the results indicated that consumer's trust expectation in an online merchant is a predictor of the consumer's choice between an e-tailer and an e-marketplace. It was further revealed that situational involvement positively affected all the five types of perceived risk, whereas only product performance risk was positively related to consumer's trust expectation. It may be inferred that the stronger product performance risk perception, the higher trust a consumer expects in an online merchant to engage in a transaction. The findings have important practical implications for developing e-commerce strategies not only for digital storefronts but also for online marketplaces that can help manage consumer's trust expectation and ultimately increase potential sales by mitigating related perceived risks involved in an online purchase. The study concludes by providing some interesting avenues for future research.