On-line trust building in e-enabled supply chain

Trust is a binding force in most buyer-supplier transactions. It is critical when uncertainty and asymmetric product information are present in the transaction of a supply chain. One of the important characteristics in developing trust among trading partners of an e-enabled supply chain is stage-wise trust development among partners. In the present work, alternatives for trust development among buyer and supplier have been identified. In order to evaluate the alternatives to evolve trust in an e-enabled supply chain, a framework involving analytic networked process is proposed. It helps in synthesizing various characteristics of trust in the e-enabled supply chain. For the illustrative example, the result indicates superiority of a community responsibility system for building on-line trust along the e-enabled supply chain.