A Study On The Perceive Value Of The Relationship Between Consumers And Internet Retailers

The rapid development of the Internet markets provides not only great chances for the Internet retailers, but also furious competitions as well. How to gain profit as soon as they can and get the competitive advantage are the most important questions they care about. No matter in traditional environments or in Internet environments, developing and maintaining customer loyalty are the key ways for enterprises to gain profit. So exploring the drivers of customer loyalty is always the research task of the scholars. Many studies have found perceived value and customer satisfaction, whose objects are products and exchanges, influence customer loyalty positively. In recent years some scholars proposed that the consumers' evaluations of the relationship would also have some effects on customer loyalty. Relationship value and relationship satisfaction, whose objects are relationships, appear correspondingly. Internet technology makes Internet retailers conduct more effective customer relationship management. This emphasizes the importance of studying relationship value in Internet environments.This dissertation takes the consumers of the B2C Internet retailers as the subjects. Based on the thoroughly literature review in this field, a model of building up customer loyalty to the Internet retailers through relationship value is put forward. In order to make the research more comprehensive and innovative, following the core concept of relationship value, three stages of research work are conducted.First, on the basis of literature review and depth interview, the dissertation defines the concept of the perceived value of the relationship between consumers and Internet retailers as consumers' comparative evaluations of what they get and lose from the relationships between them and Internet retailers. The dissertation further specifies three relationship benefits dimensions and two relationship costs dimensions of relationship value: confidence benefit, economic benefit, customization benefit, time & energy cost and privacy cost. Using the data of Internet consumers, a reliable and valid five-dimension scale is developed.Second, based on Social Exchange Theory and Trust-Commitment Theory, the dissertation builds up a theoretical model, in which the five dimensions of relationship value influence customer loyalty via relationship satisfaction and relationship commitment. And then the model is tested empirically. The results indicate that relationship satisfaction and relationship commitment are the most immediate antecedents of customer loyalty. Both of them influence customer loyalty directly, while relationship satisfaction also influences customer loyalty indirectly via relationship commitment. The five dimensions of relationship value influence customer loyalty indirectly via relationship satisfaction and relationship commitment. They have significant effects on relationship satisfaction. Relationship benefits have positive effects, while relationship costs have negative effects. Confidence benefit has no significant effect on relationship commitment. The other two benefits dimensions and time & energy cost influence relationship commitment positively. Only privacy cost has negative effect on relationship commitment. As a whole, confidence benefit has greatest positive effect on customer loyalty, economic benefit and customization benefit have less and least positive effects respectively. Privacy cost has more negative effect on customer loyalty than time & energy cost.Finally, the dissertation specifies the stages of the relationship between consumers and Internet retailers, and examines the moderating effects of relationship lifecycle to the relationship between relationship value and customer loyalty. After testing the theoretical model in the samples of different relationship stages, we conclude that the model is valid in different relationship stages. By testing the differences of the path coefficients in different relationship stages, we find that from exploration stage to maturity stage, relationship satisfaction has less and less effect on relationship commitment and customer loyalty, while relationship commitment has more and more effect on customer loyalty. From exploration stage to maturity stage, the effects of the five dimensions of relationship value change differently. As for their effects on relationship satisfaction, economic benefit has more and more positive effect, time & energy cost has more and more negative effect, privacy cost has less and less negative effect, while confidence benefit and customization benefit have the same effect in different stage. As for their effects on relationship commitment, economic benefit and time & energy cost have more and more positive effects, customization benefit has less and less positive effect. Confidence benefit has the same effect in exploration stage and expansion stage, but it has more positive effect in maturity stage. Privacy cost has more negative effect in exploration stage, but it has the same effect in expansion stage and maturity stage.The innovations of this dissertation are: (1) Based on the literature review and depth interview, the dissertation defines the concept of the perceived value of the relationship between consumers and Internet retailers and develops a reliable and valid multi-dimension scale using the data of Internet consumers. The dissertation defines and measures relationship value in B2C environments firstly, which provides reference for other scholars to conduct similar studies and tools for managers to measure customers' perception of relationship value. (2) Based on Social Exchange Theory and Trust-Commitment Theory, the dissertation builds up and tests a model in which the five dimensions of relationship value influence customer loyalty indirectly via relationship satisfaction and relationship commitment. The dissertation extends the studies on the drivers of customer loyalty, which provides broader perspective for the scholars and methods for the managers to build up customer loyalty via CRM. (3) Based on the former research, the dissertation specifies the stages of the relationship between consumers and Internet retailers and examines the moderating effects of relationship lifecycle to the relationship between relationship value and customer loyalty. The dissertation proves the validity of the theoretical model in different relationship stages, which makes the scholars understand the effects of relationship value on customer loyalty more deeply from a dynamic perspective and provides reference for managers to carry out different CRM strategies.