Methods in Sales Research: Perceived Trust in Business-to-Business Sales: A New Measure

Abstract

Measures of trust in the selling literature have usually relied on general measures of trust developed from other contexts which then may have been modified to fit the sales or sales management context. In this paper, trust is conceptualized specifically within a business-to-business sales context as containing three correlated components: salesperson trust, company trust, and product/service trust. A ten-item, three- factor scale is developed that demonstrates the appropriate reliability and validity for use in future studies incorporating the concept of perceived trust in business-to-business buyer-seller contexts.