Critical review of the e-loyalty literature: a purchase-centred framework

Over the last few years, the concept of online loyalty has been examined extensively in the literature, and it remains a topic of constant inquiry for both academics and marketing managers. The tremendous development of the Internet for both marketing and e-commerce settings, in conjunction with the growing desire of consumers to purchase online, has promoted two main outcomes: (a) increasing numbers of Business-to-Customer companies running businesses online and (b) the development of a variety of different e-loyalty research models. However, current research lacks a systematic review of the literature that provides a general conceptual framework on e-loyalty, which would help managers to understand their customers better, to take advantage of industry-related factors, and to improve their service quality. The present study is an attempt to critically synthesize results from multiple empirical studies on e-loyalty. Our findings illustrate that 62 instruments for measuring e-loyalty are currently in use, influenced predominantly by Zeithaml et al. (J Marketing. 1996;60(2):31-46) and Oliver (1997; Satisfaction: a behavioral perspective on the consumer. New York: McGraw Hill). Additionally, we propose a new general conceptual framework, which leads to antecedents dividing e-loyalty on the basis of the action of purchase into pre-purchase, during-purchase and after-purchase factors. To conclude, a number of managerial implementations are suggested in order to help marketing managers increase their customers’ e-loyalty by making crucial changes in each purchase stage

The relationship between website design and positive eWOM intention: Testing mediator and moderator effect

Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has paid attention to the phenomenon of marketing strategy because of the power of online comments to behavioural consequences. The key challenge for scholars and practitioners is to explore why consumers would like to give positive reviews of products and service. However, little empirical research has been conducted on the effect of website design on eWOM intention. The objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of website design (aesthetic and usability) on eWOM intention, which is based on the adoption of the stimulus - organism - response model. To test the hypotheses, the study uses the Partial Least Squares (PLS) to test a total of 290 respondents collected from Taiwanese customers via an online survey. The outcomes show the impact of the website's design on the attitude toward it, which would lead to positive eWOM. The study also provides empirical evidence on the moderating role of online purchasing experience and the mediating effect of attitude toward a website on eWOM intention. Finally, the discussions also show implications and managerial insight for both scholars and marketers.Internal Grant Agency of Faculty of Management and Economics, Tomas Bata University in Zlin, grant TBU [IGA/FaME/2018/015

Online Apparel Consumer Behavior: Hedonic Motivation & Post-Purchase Communication

This paper serves as a review of existing literature for the purpose of identifying potential future areas of research as it relates to the industry of e-Commerce in the apparel field. Within this paper, I use research in the subject of online consumer behavior to draw similarities and differences with research in the subject of online apparel consumer behavior. The intent is to highlight a distinction between the categories of a more generalized online consumer and an online apparel consumer, with particular attention on consumer-type responses to, and interaction with, hedonic atmosphere attributes as well as electronic word of mouth

What Drives M-Shoppers to Continue Using Mobile Devices to Buy?

Producción CientíficaThe aim of this work is to offer a better understanding of consumer continued intentions to use mobile devices to shop. An integrated model is developed to identify the drivers that lead m-shoppers to repurchase. Specifically, navigation, safety and ubiquity are posited as stimuli guiding consumers’ affective (satisfaction) and cognitive (trust and convenience) reactions that will, in turn, increase repurchase intention. Results show the impact of ubiquity on m-convenience and safety m-experience on both affective and cognitive reactions. Finally, repurchase intention is explained directly by m-satisfaction and m-convenience and indirectly by m-trust. This article contributes to the fields of mobile marketing literature and practitioner management.Ministerior de Educación y ciencia (proyecto ECO2017-8217-R)Junta de Castilla y León (proyecto VA001B10-1)Fondo europeo de desarrollo regional (proyecto VA112P17

Exploring Consumers’ Intention to Urge to Buy in Mobile Commerce: The Perspective of Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance

Mobile services have gradually transformed and broadened, and are still being developed, bringing users more convenience, ubiquity, universality, and diversification. The mobility and ubiquity of smartphones increase users’ perception of convenience, which can induce online purchases. Consumers can browse webpages on a smartphone find interesting products anywhere and anytime. They may impulsively decide to buy these products or conduct instant chats with friends to obtain product information or recommendations. It is important that we examine users’ emotions when shopping via mobile devices, now that m-commerce is gradually being accepted and used, by investigating factors such as customers’ perceptions of value, immersion, commitment, and pleasure. So, this study investigates consumers’ urge to buy and browsing activities in m-commerce from the emotional perceptive. Findings derived from data analysis of 578 records collected from the online survey. First, the relationship of pleasure, dominance and arousal on urge to buy is demonstrated in m-commerce. Second, results show that pleasure and browsing activities are critical to inducing consumers’ impulsive purchase intention in m-commerce. The total effect of pleasure on the urge to buy is close to 50%. The influence of pleasure on browsing activities is almost twice that of the urge to buy. Third, effects of web atmospherics and mobile characteristics are distinct. Web atmospherics tend to influence consumers’ perceived dominance of mobile websites, thus increasing their perceived control over the interaction process. Mobile characteristics are less important to arousal and dominance. The most popular characteristics of smartphones for consumers and vendors, ubiquity and localization, do not increase consumers’ perceived dominance and arousal towards mobile websites. Academic and practical implications are discussed further

Passive visual behavior modifiers and consumer psychophysiology online.

Through an examination of the electroencephalography (EEG) data collected from 27 university students, this study examined the efficacy of three known passive visual behavior modifiers -- color, layout, and motion -- in an e-commerce environment. These three variables have significant scholarly support in the context of traditional media, but their effect online is still largely unsubstantiated. Using EEG readings taken from regions of interest Fp1 and Fp2, the researcher attempted to measure and compare sustained evoked response upon exposure to six fictitious e-commerce web pages, each exhibiting a different passive visual behavior modifier. It was hypothesized that (H1) a product in a subtle state of motion, (H2) a greater proportion of image to text, and (H3) a color system with a dominant wavelength of approximately 650nm would evoke higher average levels of amplitude (μV) and frequency (Hz) in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex compared to stimuli exhibiting inverse properties: a static product image, a greater proportion of text to image, and a color system with a dominant wavelength of approximately 490nm. The biofeedback measurement was supplemented by a qualitative interview. Participant responses were analyzed for key words, phrases, and trends related to consumer attitude and product preference. While no significant differences were found between the visual stimuli, this study provides insight, limitations, and direction for future psychophysiological research relating to e-commerce.--Abstract

An empirical investigation of the impacts of website quality on consumer loyalty: a case of baby boomers

Online shopping has become increasingly popular with sales of $263 billion in 2013 an increase of 36$30,001 - $60,000 (32%). A principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation was performed on website quality items (e.g., system quality). As a result, two factors were chosen for system quality (i.e., web appearance and interactivity); two factors were selected for information quality (i.e., security and informativeness); and two factors were chosen for service quality (i.e., fulfillment and responsiveness). Confirmatory factor analysis via LISREL 8.8 using maximum likelihood estimation was subsequently performed to confirm the factor structure of website quality. To test all hypothesized relationships, we followed a two-step structural equation modeling approach. Results revealed that system quality dimensions (web appearance and interactivity) did not positively impact overall perceived website quality. The information quality dimension of informativeness did positively impact overall perceived website quality but information quality dimension of security did not positively impact overall perceived website quality. Service quality dimension of fulfillment did not positively impact overall perceived website quality but service quality dimension of responsiveness did positively impact overall perceived website quality. In addition, results also showed that overall perceived website quality positively impacts trust, which in turn, influences loyalty in terms of WOM, repatronage intentions, and share of wallet. Furthermore, overall perceived website quality was found to positively influence satisfaction, but satisfaction was not found to positively influence trust. However, we only found that satisfaction positively influenced WOM and share of wallet but not repatronage intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications are provided. Limitations and future research directions are addressed

Investigating Visitors’ Behavioural Response to Virtual Reality (VR) Retail Environments

This thesis aimed to explore the influence of Virtual Reality (VR) retail environment cues on visitors’ behavioural intentions in the context of urban shopping destinations. The Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) theory (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974) were employed as a theoretical foundation given that many researchers have provided substantial evidence on its suitability as a theoretical framework to investigate the effects of various physical and virtual (online/mobile) retail environment cues on human behaviour through the mediating variables of affective and cognitive states. The first step to achieving the aim was to determine the current state of knowledge surrounding this topic. Therefore, relevant literature over four key topic areas was critically reviewed including 1) urban place marketing, particularly within the broader context of urban tourism, 2) retail store environment literature extending to electronic and mobile commerce research, 3) immersive technology, and 4) technology adoption (Objective 1). Then, primary data were collected in two research phases. Research Phase 1 entailed two sets of semi-structured interviews. First, a contrasting case-based approach was employed, and interviews were conducted with seven urban place marketers from three urban place marketing organisations in four urban shopping destinations in the UK (Objective 2). The findings provided initial insights into urban place marketers’ views on the perceived barriers, benefits, internal organisational capability and external pressures associated with immersive technology (VR and Augmented Reality) implementation and their overall intention to adopt these innovative technologies for city marketing. This data was analysed using thematic analysis and four themes and eleven sub-themes emerged including three new context-specific sub-themes (technology access, organisational readiness and industry readiness). Based on these findings, twelve semi-structured interviews with visitors to Manchester City Centre were gathered and aimed to draw out context-specific themes and sub-themes. This data was also analysed using thematic analysis and overall, three themes and thirteen sub-themes emerged including four new sub-themes (virtual aesthetics, virtual atmospherics, social presence and layout design) under the main theme of VR retail environment cues. Accordingly, ten hypotheses were proposed and informed the development of a qualitative VR Visitor Behaviour Model based on S-O-R theory. The aim of Research Phase 2 was to validate the proposed model (Objective 3). To achieve this, survey data were gathered from 150 potential visitors to urban shopping destinations and the data were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) (Objective 3). From these findings, a final VR Visitor Behaviour S-O-R Model was proposed, which is the main contribution of this study (Objective 4). The thesis concludes by outlining the theoretical contributions of this research and providing guidance to urban place marketers and VR developers and designers. Finally, avenues for further research based on the identified study limitations are offered

Research on the Formation Mechanism of Multichannel Retailer Loyalty Based on Experience Spillover and Channel Reciprocity

This study proposed a multichannel loyalty model aimed at integrating experience theory, schema theory and loyalty theory. Particularly, we built a multichannel retailer loyalty framework not only from the perspective of multichannel shopping behavior, but also from sequences of channel choices, namely shopping paths, including search online but purchase offline and search offline but purchase online. Correspondingly, this study segmented the framework into two specific models: Model1.search products in one multichannel retailer’s physical, and then purchase in the same multichannel retailer’s website (model 1:offline-online); Model2.search products in one multichannel retailer’s website, and then purchase in the same multichannel retailer’s physical store (model 2:online-offline).Besides, this study empirically tested the model by EFA and CFA with the use of Spss20 and Amos19 after developing the Structural Equation Model. As a result, we demonstrated that experience plays an important role on multichannel retailer loyalty through trust. Moreover, there exists experience spillover effect of channels. A significant interactive effect of trust on loyalty among channel has been supported