A study on the effect of trust on customer participation in digital environment: focused on the online travel market

Recent market environment shows a new relationship between customer and company. You can easily observe customers take initiatives to get involved in the marketing activities such as product development, pricing and distribution etc. Despite the fact there are a lot of marketing activities initiated by customers in the online travel market, customer participation has been given little attention in the academic literature. Our research is grounded in the well-known commitment-trust theory of relationship marketing, originally proposed by Morgan and Hunt(1994). According to the theory, trust is central to successful relationship marketing. This study explores the effect of trust on customer participation in the online travel market. Consequently, this study suggests some managerial implications for marketing strategies in response to customer initiative in the marketing activities on the online travel market.