Trust Gaps And Corporate Blindspots In Chilean B2c E-Commerce

Trust is an essential ingredient of human relationships and economic exchanges among them. On the other hand, blindspots are harmful omissions in strategy implementation due to reasons such as corporate inertia or management obsessiveness in pursuing a certain vision mismatched with reality. This article outlines the main areas in which customer trust is stressed in Chilean Bussiness-to-Consumer (B2C) electronic commerce (e-commerce) and how e-buyers circumvent the problems that arise in those areas of stress, from a communications perspective. We not only discovered compensatory strategies devised by users in overcoming those problems, but also some relevant corporate blindspots in that sector that should be addressed by retailers. Despite the strong growth of retail sales in that emerging Latin American country, Chilean B2C e-commerce is relatively weak and problems of trust may be an important cause.Four areas of stress were outlined: previous perceptions about the firm, clarity and coherence of online information, security of personal data, and post-sales service. Within these, inter-channel communication incoherence, lack of integration between retailers and outsourced logistics, and incoherent notions of trust emerged as the most important corporate blindspots harming the relationship with customers. On the other hand, we identified four compensatory strategies used by clients: selective auto-exposure, informal “certifications”, online/ offline hybridization and anticipation/incorporation of other people experience. This fills a gap in the existing literature, normally focused on unilateral actions of the e-vendor or on technological aspects of e-business. These results emerge from an inductive and qualitative approach, based on principles taken from Grounded Theory.