Marketplaces are becoming more intimate, and this intimacy requires a certain level of trust between the buyer and the seller. No one wants to part with his hard-earned dollars if he doesn’t trust the person on the other end of the deal.
But trust doesn’t happen at first sight. And it’s even harder in Silicon Valley, where the market is saturated and businesses must stand out to build trust. The 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer signaled that trust in technology had declined, with the majority of respondents feeling that greed or profit fueled innovation — not the betterment of society.
The burden is now on the marketplace to build this trust. San Francisco-based Airbnb uses an insurance guarantee, while Santa Monica-based TrueCar built transparency and competitive pricing into its platform. These companies knew that consumers wouldn’t use their services if trust were absent.