Examining E-Commerce Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: An Integrated Quality-Risk-Value Perspective

Abstract

Because of the inherently virtual nature of online environments, maintaining customer loyalty on business-to-customer (B2C) e-commerce websites is a challenging task. Although there have been many e-commerce studies that investigate customer loyalty in various B2C contexts, none of them have examined loyalty by simultaneously adopting quality-, risk-, and value-driven perspectives. This study integrates the quality-satisfaction-loyalty paradigm and the extrinsic cue-quality-risk-value chain to develop a theoretical model of customer loyalty that is based on an integrated quality-risk-value perspective. Data collected from 542 experienced online shoppers are used to validate the theoretical research model. Additionally, the mediation effects of perceived e-service quality, perceived risk, perceived value, and satisfaction on the relationship between electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and loyalty in B2C websites are validated using rigorous statistical methods. As hypothesized, the findings indicate that both positive and negative eWOM significantly influence perceived e-service quality and perceived risk and, in turn, significantly affect perceived value, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty via the mediation of perceived e-service quality and risk. This study substantially enriches our understanding of the success of B2C websites by highlighting how the sequential causal relationships among key extrinsic cues, quality, risk, and value can strongly influence customer satisfaction and loyalty on these websites. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Keywords:

• customer loyalty
• electronic word-of-mouth
• eWOM
• mediating effects
• perceived risk-value model
• quality-satisfaction-loyalty chain

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by Taiwan’s National Science Council [grant number: NSC102-2410-H-006-061].

Notes on contributors

Mei-Ju Lin

Mei-Ju Lin is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Industrial and Information Management at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. Her areas of interest include consumer behaviors in electronic commerce contexts and the adoption of information systems. Her work has appeared at various conferences, such as the Asia Pacific Management conference, and in the Journal of Organizational and End User Computing.

Wei-Tsong Wang

Wei-Tsong Wang is an associate professor at National Cheng Kung University. He received his PhD in Information Science from the State University of New York at Albany. Professor Wang’s current research interests include behaviors of e-commerce consumers, user acceptance of information technology, and knowledge management. His works have appeared/or been accepted for publication in journals such as Decision Support Systems, Decision Sciences, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Information Systems Frontiers, Information and Organization, and the Journal of Organizational and End User Computing, among others.