حفظ مشتریان برای خرید مجدد در تجارت الکترونیک B2C – از منظر کیفیت ارتباطی

Information systems professionals must pay attention to online customer retention. Drawing on the relationship marketing literature, we formulated and tested a model to explain B2C user repurchase intention from the perspective of relationship quality. The model was empirically tested through a survey conducted in Northern Ireland. Results showed that online relationship quality and perceived website usability positively impacted customer repurchase intention. Moreover, online relationship quality was positively influenced by perceived vendor expertise in order fulfillment, perceived vendor reputation, and perceived website usability, whereas distrust in vendor behavior negatively influenced online relationship quality. Implications of these findings are discussed.

In general, online buying behavior can be understood in two stages: the first stage is primarily concerned with encouraging people to purchase online and the second is to encourage them to repurchase, which is critical if the e-commerce vendor is to succeed. It costs more time and effort to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones. Indeed, customer retention is often seen as a means to gaining competitive advantage [24]. However, only about 1% of online visitors return to carry out repeated purchases [10]. It is therefore important to delve into the drivers of online customer repurchase behavior [20]. Repurchase intention is a manifestation of customer loyalty. Although the literature identifies other dimensions of customer loyalty [12], repurchase behavior has a more direct effect on the vendor's profit. Careful scrutiny of the literature indicates that it is only relatively recently that studies have considered online customer repurchase behavior [14]. Indeed, few studies have examined repurchase intention through a relationship quality lens though relationship quality is regarded as an important factor in the relationship marketing literature. We therefore decided to examine antecedents of relationship quality and understand how it relates to customer repurchase behavior in an online context. Much of the relationship marketing literature looks at ways of sustaining buyer–seller relationships in traditional business situations. It focuses on buyer satisfaction and trust in the vendor by considering these two factors as key dimensions of relationship quality. It asserts that both are indispensable in maintaining a good buyer-seller relationship. Satisfaction reflects a state resulting from the buyer's evaluation of the vendor's past performance, while trust reflects the buyer's confidence in the vendor's future performance. Thus a buyer-seller relationship is of high quality only if both the vendor's past and future performance are perceived to be favorable. It is posited that the relationship quality construct may play a significant role in retaining buyers and increasing buyer loyalty in business context [19]. We focused on the relationship quality in online customer's repurchase intention in the B2C context (the online relationship quality) and examined several key antecedents of online relationship quality: vendor characteristics (perceived website usability, perceived expertise in order fulfillment and perceived reputation) and vendor behavior factor (distrust in vendor behavior). We therefore posed two questions: (1) to what extent does online relationship quality influence customers’ online repurchase intention; and (2) what factors influence online relationship quality?

Our study developed and tested a model explaining B2C e-commerce customer repurchase intention from a relationship quality perspective. By including vendor characteristics (perceived website usability, perceived expertise in order fulfillment and perceived reputation) and vendor behavior (distrust in vendor behavior), our model explained the importance of online relationship quality to online re-purchase intention. To a certain degree, our study demonstrated the value of using relationship marketing theory to account for online customer repurchasing behavior. Its results should provide useful implications for e-commerce practitioners.