A Research On The Mechanism Of Loyalty Program: Antecedents And Consequences

Along with the development of virtual economy, virtual currency is increasingly flourishing. Too many researches have been done about the influences of virtual currency on macro-economy,finance risks and monetary policy. However, few researches focused on the actions of network operators and netizen. The research studies the operation of virtual currency and its pattern based on data of 127 communities. According to the generalization of the data the author constructs a model of virtual currency. In the end, it gives some advices to enterprises and government.The results of research indicated the most important factors that influence consumers'continuance usage intention of virtual currency is satisfaction at first, secondly perceived justice, however, attitude did not be tested to have significant effeet. Simultaneity, the most important factors influencing consumers, satisfaction are the value. However, few researchers considered the other important factors:such as mental account.This study affirms the usefulness of dividing perceived benefits of LPs into hard and soft benefits, and underlines the importance of soft benefits. Both a means-ends-chain perspective support such an approach, the former emphasizing that soft benefits derive from hard benefits and the latter focusing on the prime role of the consumer in the cocreation of intangible value, which is isomorphic with soft benefits. However, previous research has not moved much beyond the conceptualization of hard and soft benefits. This study has conceived, operationalized, measured and used hard and soft benefits in a path model of antecedents and consequences of a LP.In summary, the findings in this study provide important insights for managers seeking to overcome the challenges associated with designing effective LPs. First, it may be possible for firms to design customized reward packages based on its customers' levels of value consciouness and LP rewards proneness. Since value is co-created, the ability to customize one's LP should increase the consumer's perceived value. Second, since the empirical results of this study indicate that both value conscious and LP rewards prone consumers are attracted to soft benefits and, given the commoditization challenges discussed previously, managers should shift their attention to the development of service differentiation through soft benefits. The latter offer more scope for creating a competitive advantage than hard benefits, although it should be emphasized that if soft benefits are co-created the process of their development is not totally in the hands of the firm.There are several research directions that can follow from this study. Although the distinction between soft and hard benefits has been mentioned in previous studies, this is the first study to create measures for them. So, future studies should focus on both the development and refinement of ways to measure these important design elements. However, if benefits are personal and value is co-created, it becomes a challenge for researchers to measure them since benefits at some point become idiosyncratic to each respondent. as a result, popular preference measurement methodologies such as conjoint analysis and discrete choice will need to be modified to incorporate notions of value co-creation. Nonetheless, it is essential for researchers to determine what aspects of LPs are successful so practitioners can incorporate them into their consumer relation management strategies.