Abstract
Trust is a key element in developing customer-firm relationships in the virtual marketplace. The peculiarities of the online setting, however, threaten firms’ capability to exploit opportunities derived from such environments. This can lead to customers mostly using the online setting as an information source rather than as a place to conduct transactions. Trust is a key antecedent of online transactions. In this chapter, the authors focus on trust’s role in the virtual marketplace by reviewing a series of relevant studies and proposing directions for future research.