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Top1. Introduction
Since the beginning of the Internet, trust has been recognized as a critical driver of success in online platforms (Jiang & Lau, 2021). It leads to a favorable attitude towards the online vendor, which positively affects consumers' purchase intentions (Bashir et al., 2018; Oliveira, et al., 2017). In contrast, a lack of face-to-face social contact with store employees and other shoppers may reduce trust and elevate risk perceptions, which prevents consumers from online shopping (Damen et al., 2020). The positive influence of online social presence on consumer trust, loyalty, and purchase intention is well documented (cf. Zhu et al., 2020). A variety of online social media applications exist which enable two-way interactions between customers and e-retailers. They can be crucial in conveying a social presence that fuels consumers' initial trust in the e-retailer. Therefore, there is a need for experiment-based research investigating the effect of social media cues such as blogs, community sites, video sharing sites, and instant messaging platforms (Lăzăroiu et al., 2020). This paper aims to address this gap by examining the effect of embedding different social media cues such as 'facial photo', 'video stream', and 'social networks' on consumers' initial trust towards online vendors. The results of this study are valuable for expanding both theoretical research and practical applications of online social presence concerning purchasing intention. This study with a research model reveals how the purchase intention will be motivated by integrating online social media platforms.
Meanwhile, the moderating effects and the mediating effects are also discussed. We begin this paper by conceptualizing online trust and its antecedents. First, we define the concept of trust and distinguish different types of online trust. Then, we review a selected set of findings from the past research to lay grounds for our theoretical assumptions. Next, we describe the research methodology and results. We conclude the paper by discussing the theoretical and practical implications, followed by limitations and suggestions for future research.