Building Trust Through Digital Content Marketing Co-Creation in B-to-B Relationships

Building trust through the co-creation of digital content marketing (DCM) at various stages of the business-to-business (B-to-B) relationships is a complex interplay of calculative, cognitive, and affective forms of trust. This chapter examines how trust is manifested and evolves during DCM co-creation processes in B-to-B relationship development stages. With qualitative research, the study reveals how different actors engage in content co-creation at subsequent stages of relationships. The research identifies that DCM co-creation involves iterative trust development, with calculative trust present across all relationship development stages, accompanied by cognitive and affective trust that intensify through positive experiences. This finding challenges linear trust development models across relationship stages, revealing that trust assessment occurs independently for each DCM co-creation initiative. The study contributes to understanding how DCM co-creation is both a trust-building mechanism and a relationship development tool in B-to-B contexts.