Title: Customer trust in virtual environments in service sectors (a case study in Poland)

Authors: Justyna Matysiewicz, Slawomir Smyczek

Addresses: Faculty of Management, The Karol Adamiecki University of Economics, Ul. 1 Maja 50, 40–287, Katowice, Poland. ' Faculty of Management, The Karol Adamiecki University of Economics, Ul. 1 Maja 50, 40–287, Katowice, Poland

Abstract: Internet technologies are the most popular means of communicating with other people, gathering information and purchasing products. In this article the authors want to compare two service sectors: the banking sector and the medical one. Both of them use the internet as a tool for creating virtual organisations and providing services to customers. Moreover, customer trust is one of the crucial factors in the development of both service sectors. The development of the internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) has provided a new area and tools for the development of more flexible services for banking and medical (not only administrative) applications. The purpose of this study is to identify the trust which e-banking and e-health service users place in virtual organisations. The authors have ventured a thesis that customer trust in virtual organisations in Polish service sectors is high as a consequence of even higher customer satisfaction with traditional organisations and great customer trust in traditional institutions.

Keywords: consumer trust; virtual organisations; VOs; virtual environments; e-services; online services; consumer loyalty; satisfaction; banking services; healthcare services; Poland; internet; medical services.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNVO.2008.018825

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2008 Vol.5 No.3/4, pp.300 - 324

Published online: 19 Jun 2008 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article