Exploring the continuance intentions of consumers for B2C online shopping: Perspectives of fairness and trust

Purpose ‐ Like any product purchases, the success of online shopping depends largely on user satisfaction and other factors that further affect customers' intentions to continue shopping online (continuance intentions). This study seeks to integrate fairness theory with the trust concept to construct a model for investigating consumers' continuance intentions toward online shopping. Design/methodology/approach ‐ An online survey collected data from 226 users with online shopping experience to empirically validate the hypothesised model. Findings ‐ The results indicate that distributive fairness and interactional fairness exert significant positive effects on customers' satisfaction and trust in vendors. Satisfaction is a strong predictor of the continuance intentions of consumers. However the fact that the relationship between trust in vendors and consumers' continuance intentions is insignificant offers insight into trust: consumers continue shopping online with certain levels of misgiving. Originality/value – ‐ The findings suggest that a user's trust in an online vendor can be enhanced by increasing fairness, particularly distributive fairness and interactional fairness. This also implies that an online user's satisfaction and trust are not just related to products: therefore vendors should put effort into the pre- and post-sale experiences.