Acquiring trust in the digital age: the potential of social media to boost small and medium-sized businesses’ competitiveness

Given that consumer tastes are diversifying and becoming more focused on aspects of credence, trust in information emanating from a company is becoming increasingly important. Consumers’ faith in businesses may rise because of social media, which has taken over as the primary platform for Internet communication. The concept of a trust-building mechanism that might take place on business social media pages is empirically investigated in this research. A survey was conducted among social media users in the UK. Structural equation modelling with covariance was used to examine the given data. It shows that trust may be developed towards two items in the interactive setting of business social media pages. Consumer trust is the first, and customer trust in a corporation is the second. The findings also support a link between trust and purchase intent, both of which are dependent on a customer’s willingness to learn more. The outcome can, therefore, be used as a foundation for developing more successful marketing efforts where a corporation is the source of knowledge regarding the credibility (added-value) characteristics of its products.