Relationship quality and customer loyalty in internet grocery shopping in the UK
Despite the growing body of literature on online loyalty issues, little research hasbeen conducted on the link between relationship quality (RQ) and customer loyaltyin the context of Internet grocery shopping. The existing literature on electronicretailing does not explain the differences in loyalty across product and servicecategories. As shopping for groceries is generally an activity repeated at regulartime intervals, consumers' behaviours is likely to be very different when purchasinggoods and services which are only needed occasionally. Due to the frequency ofgrocery purchase, a relationship is likely to be developed between customers and theretailer. Whilst perceived service quality and customer satisfaction have beenrecognised as antecedents of customer loyalty in previous studies, it is notunderstood whether RQ adds any additional effect over the traditional measure suchas perceived service quality and customer satisfaction in determining loyalty inInternet grocery shopping. Therefore, this study attempts to address this researchgap by incorporating a RQ perspective, as well as customer satisfaction andperceived service quality.Building on an extensive literature review, RQ is conceptualised and examined forits theoretical applicability via an initial qualitative study, followed by a quantitativephase using structural equation modelling analysis with the data collected by an esurveyof 519 Internet grocery shoppers. The results show that RQ is positivelyassociated with customer loyalty in Internet grocery shopping. Among thedimensions of RQ, relationship satisfaction has the strongest direct effect on theformation of customer loyalty. In addition, loyalty can be also developed throughperceived relational investment and affective commitment. Moreover, it is foundthat perceived relational investment from the Internet grocery retailer indirectlyinfluence customer loyalty. Contrary to expectation, trust plays a very unimportantrole in developing customer loyalty in Internet grocery shopping. The finding alsoindicates that e-service quality has a significant effect on e-satisfaction in Internetgrocery shopping. In order to see whether the multi-component RQ model canperform better than the global RQ model, a comparison is made between theaggregated and the disaggregated model of RQ. The results indicate that thedisaggregated model performs much better than the aggregated one.
Year of publication: |
2007
|
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Authors: | Lu, Xiaoming |
Publisher: |
Xiaoming (Lucy) Lu |
Saved in:
freely available
Saved in favorites
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