Online stickiness: its antecedents and effect on purchasing intention

Abstract

Website stickiness, the website's ability to retain online customers and prolong his/her duration of each stay, is one of the key factors to e-commerce success. However, how to make customers stick around is still unclear to online retailers. This paper examines the antecedents as well as effect of customer's intention to stick on a website. A model is developed and tested using a survey of 434 web users. The results confirm that the web user's willingness to stick to a website is a strong predictor of his/her intention to transact. Web managers thus need to put emphasis on the creation of the website stickiness. The results of this study also suggest that the formation of the stickiness is affected by web user attitude towards a website, trust in a website and the quality of website content. Implications of these findings are discussed for researchers and practitioners.

Keywords:

• Website stickiness
• Website design
• Online purchasing intention

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Dr. John Karat and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and insightful suggestions. The financial support (under the contract of NSC 95-2416-H-031-007) of the National Science Council of the Republic of China is also greatly appreciated.