Examining the antecedents of trust and rapport in services: Discovering new interrelationships

A study was designed to examine the relationship between rapport and trust in a service context, and to gain a better understanding of the factors that contribute to these relational constructs.Consistent with the literature, both expertise and dependability were directly related to trust of the service provider. However, familiarity, which had previously been found to be directly related to trust, was found to be indirectly related through rapport, which was related to trust. All four hypotheses examining the antecedents of rapport were supported. The research suggests that building rapport may be an important intermediate step in building customer trust.