Track: e-Business/e-Service/e-Commerce

Abstract

In recent years, the number of Iranian users on social media platforms such as Instagram has had a noticeable rapid increase. Lots of medium sized businesses share their products and services with customers via their Instagram pages and sell them online. The aim of the authors is to understand how much Instagram users trust business pages and to what extent these pages impact the purchasing decision of the customer. The present study explored the relationship between the number of mutual following pages on Instagram and the trust of customers in online shopping using Instagram as a platform. The data collected through the survey is from 136 Instagram users in Iran. Upon analyzing different variables, the results validate that the only factor effecting customers' confidence and economic trust is the number of times that a user visits their Instagram account and browses through the pages.