نوآوری و مشارکت به عنوان عوامل تعیین کننده وفاداری وب سایت: II. عوامل تعیین کننده وفاداری مصرف کننده در تجارت الکترونیک B2C(کسب و کار به مصرف کننده)

This paper is the second of the series of studies entitled “Innovativeness and Involvement as Determinants of Website Loyalty”, which was designed to test Foxall's [(1995). Cognitive styles of consumer initiators. Technovation 15(5), 269–288] style/involvement model in the context of Internet buyer behaviours. In this paper, a consumer Website loyalty model was proposed to describe how consumer transfer their existing brand loyalty in the traditional retail market to the same brand's Website in the B2C e-commerce market and how their perceived risk at the brand's Website mediates this loyalty transformation. Data were collected via an email invitation and Web-based questionnaire. One thousand and fourty four Taiwan Internet buyers randomly selected from the database of a well-known brand's Website have completed the survey. The multiple regression technique indicated the robustness of this loyalty transformation model (adjusted R2=0.50R2=0.50). Findings further indicated the impact that consumers’ cognitive style/involvement have on their loyalty transformation model. After segmenting consumers via their DSI and PDI scores, the distinct loyalty transformation models are revealed: the adjusted R2R2 of more-involved innovators’ loyalty transformation model was the highest (0.60), followed by more involved adaptors’ model (0.45), less involved innovators’ model (0.45), and finally, less involved adaptors’ model (0.42). Discussions of how consumers’ cognitive style and involvement level interact with each other and impact on the predictors of the Website loyalty are discussed. Proposals are made of how Website managers can use this knowledge to build marketing strategies.

Consumer loyalty has long been regarded as the core of brand equity (Aaker, 1991), a basis for a price premium (Aaker, 1996), and an essence of the business/consumer relationship (Reichheld, 1996). However, being an extremely important technological innovation and having the potential to become the most powerful non-store retailing channel in the this century, the Internet has created a brand new B2C e-commerce market, which is so new that few studies were known to have investigated consumer loyalty in the Internet market (Jarvenpaa and Todd, 1997). The new retailing format of the B2C e-commerce was argued to profoundly affect individuals’ buying behaviours (Lim, 2003), and made consumer loyalty even more important than it is in the traditional retail market (e.g. Harris and Goode, 2004). ThorbjØrnsen and Supphellen (2004) indicated the brand loyalty is a major determinant for Website use and affectively loyal consumers are motivated to visit a brand's Websites because they sense a relationship to their favoured brand. Similarly, Gommans et al. (2001) suggested that a company using the same well-known brand name in the traditional market and its Website (e.g. Waterstones—Waterstones.co.uk) will be able to persuade existing consumers from the traditional retail market to buy at the brand's Website. Given the importance of consumer loyalty to the business (e.g. Aaker, 1996), and the growing need to better understand Internet buyers (e.g. Srinivasan et al., 2002), this study aims to develop a model describing how consumers transform their brand loyalty in the traditional retail market to the brand's Website in the B2C e-commerce market. Findings of this study will contribute to managers in making the decisions of how best position their Website. In such a way, the company's existing competitive advantage in the traditional market (loyal consumers) can be leveraged to the brand's Website in the new B2C e-commerce market. Past studies of consumer loyalty and perceived risk are reviewed sequentially in order to develop the study's hypotheses and the conceptual framework.