Comparative Audit of Algorithmic Trust, Affective Dissonance, and ‘Synthetic Trust’ in the Indian Digital Retail Ecosystem

The rapid evolution of the Indian digital retail ecosystem has restructured traditional models of consumer trust, replacing human-centric service recovery with high-velocity algorithmic fulfilment. Drawing upon Expectancy Disconfirmation Theory, this study conducts a cross-sectoral algorithmic audit of 60,000 authentic consumer grievances to investigate the relationship between ‘Synthetic Trust’ and affective dissonance across traditional e-commerce, planned e-grocery, and hyper-local quick-commerce platforms.