A Study On The Bonding Orientation Of B2C E-tailers

Building long-term relationships with customers can improve B2C e-tailors' profit and help them getting the competitive advantage. However, because alternative ways to build long-term customer relationships are scattered and business practitioners often select those ways randomly, how to build and maintain customer relationships is still not clear, which means that it is necessary for scholars to sum up and extract those ways from theory aspect. As a theory to focus on customer relationships building and maintaining, relationship marketing proposes an organizational philosophy that puts the buyer-seller relationship at the center of the firm's strategic or operational thinking. Despite the increasing recognition of the relationship marketing concept, little research has been conducted to investigate and better understand how to implement relationship marketing programs with customers. As a result of the lack of research, business practitioners seeking to implement a relationship marketing concept have had no specific guidance. Some scholars use the term "relationship marketing orientation" to mean the implementation of relationship marketing but empirical research that focuses on the implementation of relationship marketing in the Internet environment is relatively spare.In response, this dissertation uses the term "bonding orientation" to mean the implementation of relationship marketing for B2C e-tailors and conducts three aspects works around the core construct bonding orientation.Firstly, based on a review of the literature, and supplementing these findings with findings from field interviews with managers and consumers in the B2C e-tailor industry in China, this dissertation suggests an operational definition for bonding orientation and develops a scale. Findings indicate that bonding orientation include three dimensions: financial bonding orientation, social bonding orientation and structural bonding orientation. A reliable and valid three-dimension scale for this construct is developed.Secondly, based on definition of bonding orientation construct, what has appeared in market orientation theory, relationship marketing theory and organizational commitment theory and the findings from our field interviews, this dissertation proposes top management support and organizational commitment as antecedents of bonding orientation and test their relationships with bonding orientation empirically.The results indicate that top management support has positive effect on both social bonding orientation and structural bonding orientation, whereas it has not significant effects on financial bonding orientation. Organizational commitment has significant positive effect on financial bonding orientation, social bonding orientation and structural bonding orientation.Finally, based on definition of bonding orientation construct, this dissertation categorizes bonding orientation into three components:financial, social, and structural. This dissertation examines how each component affect on business performance. Furthermore, this dissertation identifies and empirically tests uncertainty about predictability of customer orders, uncertainty of the third part logistics service quality and website reputation that may moderate relationships between the three components and business performance. The results suggest that financial bonding orientation has a positive impact on business performance for those B2C e-retailers with high level website reputation. Social bonding orientation has a direct and most significant impact on business performance. An effect of Social bonding orientation on business performance is significantly negatively moderated by uncertainty of the third part logistics service quality. Structural bonding orientation has a positive impact on business performance. Uncertainty of the third part logistics service quality positively moderates relationship between structural bonding orientation and business performance.The contributions of this dissertation as follows:(1) on the basis of literature review and these findings with findings from field interviews with managers and online consumers in the B2C e-tailor industry, this dissertation proposes an operational definition for bonding orientation and develops a scale reliable and valid multi-dimension using the data from managers and online consumers; (2) based on market orientation theory, relationship marketing theory and organizational commitment theory and the findings from our field interviews, this dissertation explores organizational antecedents of bonding orientation from inside of B2C e-tailors and tests them; (3) based on market orientation theory, relationship marketing theory, transaction cost theory and reputation theory, and supplementing these findings with findings from field interviews with managers in the B2C e-tailor industry in China, this dissertation discusses the relationship between bonding orientation and business performance and moderating effect of uncertainty about predictability of customer orders, uncertainty of the third part logistics service quality and website reputation on this relationship and tests them.