Document Type

Article

Abstract

The Internet has introduced major changes in the way companies conduct business. Practically, rising numbers of customers are using the Internet for Electronic Commerce (EC). In the respect of customer relationship, Business-to-Consumer (B2C) EC provides ongoing information, service, and support that have changed the approaches of communication and interaction with customers. The nature of online customer behavior in the EC transaction is therefore different from the one in a traditional retailing channel. This research focuses on the online customer behavior through examining the relationship between the behavior intention and the online behavior itself. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), a base model of Online Customer Loyalty is developed. The research also proposes an alternative model in which Satisfaction is adopted as a mediated variable. Four hundred and twenty-three questionnaires are collected for the empirical experiment. The method of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used to evaluate the measurement and structural models. The result indicates that TPB can be used to explain the behavior of Online Customer Loyalty. The structure relationship between Behavior Intention and Online Customer Loyalty is significant. The three constructs influencing Behavior Intention including Attitude toward Behavior, Subjective Norm and Perceived Behavioral Control also have indirectly positive effects on the behavior of Online Customer Loyalty. The two competing models are compared. Both models are acceptable when judged by the criteria of goodness-of-fit measures. However, the alternative model has a higher explained proportion of variance in Online Customer Loyalty.

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