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H1: Blog trustworthiness affects readers purchase
intention behavior.
blog, the higher the number of visitors will visit
the blog.
(Ahn, Jang & Lee, 2012) declared that online
reputation can be considered as a main factor for
the organization to gain trust. Trust is easier to gain
when the companies are well known or have a good
reputation in business (Ahuja & Medury, 2010;
Castaldo, Premazzi & Zerbini, 2010). Huang et al.
(2008), Cyr (2008), and Huffaker (2010) acknowl-
edged that reputation has a significant relationship
with trust. On the other hand, Droge, Stanko, and
Pollitte (2010) noted that blogs have been used as
an important information distribution channel and
as a knowledge-sharing tool to gain trust.
According to Ahn et al. (2012) one of the impor-
tant criteria that might lead to customer trustwor-
thiness is the quality in writing. A good blog comes
from those who are expert in their field which
might lead to a qualified and informative writing
style. Tan, Na, and Theng (2011) affirming that a
blogger writing style may gain the readers' trust
and influence the customer purchase intention and
trust to be one of the factors that lead to online
purchases (Teo & Liu, 2007). Ganguly, Dash, and
Cyr (2009) affirmed that online purchases were
obtained from the trust gained by the readers or
customers from the blog they read. The absence of
trust might lead to no purchase intentions.
2 LITERATURE REVIEWS
2.1
Food blog
Oxford dictionary refers a blog is a personal web-
site or webpage on which an individual record,
opinions or links to another site on a regular basis.
One of the important characteristics is that blogs
have the frequent updates. (Herring, et al., 2005)
affirmed a blog as a mini website which have a
reverse chronological order that are updated daily
or weekly.
Blogs have existed since the early years of the
Internet and have been used widely not only to
share an individual thought, but also in sharing
knowledge and information with the cyber world.
(Schmidt, 2007) mentioning that through blog
comments, readers seem to be clustered by the
network and simplify the communication among
those who have the same interest.
Robinson (2009) states the articles written by
food blogger focuses on restaurants, household
cooking as well as recipes. As previously high-
lighted, in addition to sharing recipes, techniques
of cooking, food blogs also discuss about food and
restaurant review with regard to locations, type of
food served, pricing and best-selling menus. The
increasing number of food blogs seems to give an
impact towards the customer purchase intention
behaviour. Bruns (2006) however states that food
blogging might turn out to be a failure for a busi-
ness if there is much critique about the food. On
the other hand, attributes that may influence ones
in selecting information in the food blogs may be
grouped into three broad categories, namely blog
trustworthiness, blog involvement and product
information highlights.
2.3
Blog involvement and online purchase
intention
Blogs as a new sharing method which allows the
blogger and readers to communicate and interact
with one another based on their topic of inter-
est (Wu & Lee, 2012). (Doyle, Heslop, Ramirez &
Cray, 2012) declared that blog readers mostly get
attracted to the annotations that come from indi-
vidual experience. Involvements have created a
communication among blog readers which will
lead to the persuasion attempt (Pentina & Taylor,
2010) and positive comment influenced the readers
purchase decision making (Chen, 2008).
Chang et al. (2011) contends that the discus-
sion, interaction and participation in conversation
in blogs have a positive impact towards online pur-
chase intention compared to the more traditional
websites. Shneiderman (2000) pointed out that
communication through a suggestion from users
shall help to encourage reader trust as well as will-
ingness to purchase.
2.2
Trustworthiness
According to Tripp, Jensen, and Carlson (1994)
trustworthiness is the degree to which the audi-
ence perceives that the communicator intends to
convey a valid statement. Hardin (2002) stated that
trust involvement is the reason for which the rel-
evant parties consider to be trustworthy. Huang,
Shen, Lin, and Chang (2008) affirmed that trust
for the blog is considered when the readers rely on
the statement in a blog and persuade others to do
the same. The trustworthiness of the content in
the blogs has a positive impact towards the elec-
tronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM) (Chang, Lee &
Huang, 2011). Ghazisaeedi, Steyn, and Van Heer-
den (2012) affirm that the higher trust put on the
3 METHODOLOGY
The unit of analysis of this study involved visitors
and blog reader of www.friedchilles.com. A total
of 384 survey questionnaires were distributed and
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