Consumers’ Level of Organizational Trust When Buying From Locally Owned Businesses vs. Corporations

Abstract

This paper explored the consumers’ level of organizational trust in deciding to buy from local businesses versus from corporations. This was done by investigating benevolence and integrity as constructs of trust and explored the impact of affective commitment. This paper also explored if demographics namely gender, education level, age, employment status and year in school (if they are currently attending school), had any impact on the consumers’ benevolence, integrity and affective commitment. The result of this study showed that gender did not affect the decision to purchase from local business or from corporation. Age and educational level also did not have any impact of purchase decisions. However, employed participants were committed to businesses that they frequented. Participants who felt that customer service and customer reviews were important felt a higher level of affective commitment towards businesses that they frequented.