For internet shopping-malls, customer retention according to customer loyalty uplift is more emphasized as an important thing than off-line shopping-malls. Because the loyals not only purchase a lot but also recommend the mall to new customers quickly...
For internet shopping-malls, customer retention according to customer loyalty uplift is more emphasized as an important thing than off-line shopping-malls. Because the loyals not only purchase a lot but also recommend the mall to new customers quickly using internet media. For such reason, many studies on customer satisfaction or web-site loyalty for internet shopping-malls are carried out. But existing studies are mostly focusing on relationship between customer loyalty and satisfaction or conformation of effects on customer loyalty by individual variables which properties are provided by internet shopping-mall supplier. But there are insufficient studies on what variables are actually effect customer loyalty, and on how customers' attitude or behavior is effected by these variables.
In addition, the fact that the customers with high loyalty are not always satisfied and the customers who are satisfied not always have high loyalty was revealed from existing studies, and it is s2, he factor which maintains customers and raises the loyalty are not only customer satisfaction but also trust and switching costs which play important roles.
Also, the general recognition for internet shopping-mall was that it would be easier to change business connection and have lower customer loyalty than off-line shopping-mall, but the study on whether this recognition is true or not has not been conducted.
Therefore in this study, customer satisfaction and trust are suggested as preceding variables that effect customer loyalty, and switching gains are suggested as a moderating variable between customer satisfaction & trust and customer loyalty. Moreover, different from other studies, this study classifies customer loyalty into attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty, and suggests actual strategic plan based on the analysis results.
In spite of general recognition that it would be easier to change business connection and have low customer loyalty for internet shopping-malls, the study results showed that customer satisfaction and trust made meaningful effect on customer loyalty even in internet shopping-mall, and especially, switching gains was showed to play moderating role between satisfaction-attitudinal loyalty and trust-behavioral loyalty. These results is meaningful for showing that customer satisfaction or trust effect importantly on customer loyalty and that switching gains which are recognised by customers plays moderating role on customer loyalty.
The abstract of main content of this study is followed.
First, customer satisfaction and trust showed meaningful positive(+) effect on each attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty. The explanation rate for the effect of customer satisfaction on attitudinal and behavioral loyalty is about 31%, and the explanation rate for the effect of trust on attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty are 33%, and 38% each. These results show that in internet shopping-malls, both customer satisfaction and trust act as strong preceding variable of customer loyalty, and it shows that internet shopping-mall firms must work on not only customer satisfaction uplift but also trust building to raise customer loyalty.
Second, the bigger the recognition on switching gains, the bigger effect of customer satisfaction on attitudinal loyalty. This means that if one recognizes that switching benefits are larger than switching costs, he/she shows switching intention to other shopping-malls or become deeply committed to existing shopping-mall that he/she are not considering switching to other shopping-mall.
Third, the hypothesis about lower the recognition on switching gains the more effect of customer satisfaction on behavioral loyalty was not supported. Namely, you can see that the assertion of Ganesan(l994) which the consumer shows loyalty over specific brand by repeating purchase action even though the consumer recognizes switching costs and not satisfied does not apply to internet shopping-malls.
Fourth, the hypothesis about lower the recognition on switching gains the more effect of trust on attitudinal loyalty was not supported. This means that the recognition of switching costs are not playing moderating role between trust and attitudinal loyalty. Therefore, different from the assertion of Sharma and Patterson(2000) which trust gets more relation with the committment as the recognition on switching costs gets bigger, this study shows that the recognition of switching costs is not effecting relationship between trust and attitudinal loyalty in internet shopping-malls.
Fifth, as the recognition of switching gains get bigger, trust effects more to behavioral loyalty. This means that if trust level does not meet the clients' expectations or trusts on security, personal information protection is low, the customers can show immediate switching action. Especially, considering that the anxiety of clients about security level of payment system in internet shopping-malls is high, a strategy is required to prevent customer secession by increasing the trust level of customers through third approvals, encryption, authentication, and passwords.