A Preliminary Investigation of the Effect of Social Media on Affective Trust in Customer-Supplier Relationships

We present the preliminary results of an ongoing research aimed at investigating the role of social media in the process of trust building, with particular attention to the case of small-medium enterprises (SME). Our findings show that social media contribute to increase the affective trust more than traditional websites. This result suggests that social media have the potential to enhance the business of SMEs other than large companies, by fostering the affective commitment of customers.