Egypt is currently one of the leading nations especially in the Middle East region with a well-established e-commerce environment and advanced IT infrastructure, but rapid growth of e-commerce will soon occur in other nations with similar consumption patterns. This study tests a model of antecedents (consumer experience, propensity to trust, reputation, perceived website size, ease of use, perceived usefulness, and website quality) and consequences of consumers’ trust toward online travel websites. Trust is expected to predict consumer attitude, perceived risk, and intention to purchase travel online. Data of 1,431 users of online travel websites were selected from the Supreme Council of Universities Database–Egypt (SCU) and analyzed through structural equation modeling. The findings show that all the aforementioned factors with the exception of consumer experience influence consumer trust toward online travel websites. Trust influences consumers’ attitude, perceived risk, and intention to purchase travel online.

Purpose: – The theoretical understanding of online shopping behaviour has received much attention. Less focus has been given to online retailing ethics. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test a comprehensive model of online retailing ethics.Design/methodology/approach: – The study used a survey amongst a sample representative of universities across Egypt. In total, 310 questionnaire were collected and analysed using structure equation modelling using WarpPLS.Findings: – The results indicate that the consumer perceptions of online retailing ethics (CPORE) as a second-order construct is composed of five constructs (security, privacy, non-deception, fulfilment/reliability, and service recovery) and strongly predictive of online consumer satisfaction. Furthermore, the authors find a significant mediating effect of trust, and commitment on the relationship between CPORE and customer satisfaction. The results also show that individualism had moderate effects on the relationship between CPORE and customer satisfaction. Contrary to expectations, power distance had no significant effect.Research limitations/implications: – Despite the contributions of this study some research limitations need acknowledgment. First, this study employed a convenience sample. The authors encourage future studies to use random sampling of general consumers. The ethics literature identifies some factors which influence ethical judgments of consumers (e.g. sex, age, and education). Such research could identify how each variable, individually and cooperatively, impacts consumer ethical evaluations of online retailing. The authors did not collect data from non-internet shoppers because the focus of this study was online consumers referring to their latest purchase online. It may be an interesting extension, however, to test this conceptual model for other populations like non-online consumers.Originality/value: – This study developed and empirically tested a comprehensive model of CPORE with its multidimensional constructs and evaluated its impact on both consumer satisfaction and repurchase intention via trust and commitment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the customers habits of purchasing as well as shopping behaviours. This study seeks to develop an integrated model of the critical role of trust and privacy concerns in influencing consumers purchase behaviour through social media. It also explored the moderating role of COVID-19 on these relationships. Quantitative data were collected using survey strategy through questionnaires to address different levels of the study. Our proposed model was tested with 1,200 consumers, 600 prior to COVID-19 and 600 during COVID-19. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling was conducted to assess the hypotheses. The findings revealed that purchase intention depends on trust and privacy concerns. Information quality, security concerns, ease of use, privacy/security assurance seal, and disposition to third party certification are the main drivers of trust and privacy concerns. Furthermore, our proposed model during COVID-19 period has higher explanator power (R2 = 0.741) than before COVID-19 period (R2 = 0.603 and consumers buying behaviour has been increased during COVID-19. The results offer important implications for retailers and are likely to stimulate further research in the area of purchase behaviour through social media.