The article below appeared on the CyberAtlas.com site and once again emphasizes the need for a trust system. Trust is an issue that varies with the perceived risk. The perception may vary between the sender and the recipient - self-rating versus rating from others. It has components such as financial matters, ethical behavior and moral behavior. At the base of the issue is authenticity - are you the person you hold yourself out to be?

Any symbol or text used to convey trust would have to be very difficult to counterfeit. Finally it would have to be up to each person or company to signup for the service which would leave most businesses unrated. Of course, like all trust issues, who would you want to do business with - a rated or unrated company? Your answer would probably depend of the perceived risk.

Terry Wellman, ed.

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Perceptions of Trust

By Robyn Greenspan

Just over half of surveyed consumers discontinued doing business with a company because they were uncomfortable with their privacy protection, a report from Accenture found. The November 2003 survey of 570 individuals that mixed business marketing executives, privacy officers and customer relationship management executives with consumer respondents revealed that each group often has a different perception of privacy policies and trust issues.

The disparity is evident as 80 percent of the business respondents awarded their companies a 4 or 5 rating on a scale of 1 to 5 (where 5 is the highest) in terms of their ability to generate trust with customers, while 81 percent of the customer respondents chose a 3 or 4 rating.

Nearly one-quarter of business respondents indicated that their company primarily published their privacy policy because it was the ethical thing to do and it made them good corporate citizens, while only a mere 3 percent of consumer respondents believed that to be the reason. The largest portion of consumer participants — 45 percent — stated that companies published their privacy policies because it was required by law, and one-quarter thought it was done to minimize legal risk. Only 13 percent of the business responses cited an effort to build trust with customers, compared to 16 percent of consumers.

The survey found that privacy policies actually have little impact on whether consumers trust companies, and most were influenced by company or product reputation. Businesses believed that good customer service was the most influential factor.

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