A Research On The Relationship Between E-service Quality And Customer Loyalty In M-commerce Context

With the rapid development of mobile internet technology, infrastructure and terminal devices, e-commerce is now envoloving into m-commerce. The application and service of m-commerce is becoming more and more important in people's daily life. In the meantime, the competition among m-commerce providers is becoming quite fierce. Thus, how to improve the e-service quality of m-commerce, so as to enhance the customer m-loyalty is becoming a very meaningful topic both in academic and practical field.While the importance of customer loyalty has been recognized in m-commerce literature, the conceptualization and empirical validation of a customer loyalty model for m-comerce context has not been addressed yet. This paper describes a theoretical model for investigation the e-service quality influences on customer loyalty under m-commerce context. Based on the theoretical model, a comprehensive set of hypotheses were formulated and a methodology for testing them was outlined. The paper aims at answering the following questions through the study:How to measaure the e-service quality in m-commerce context? What dimensions does e-service consist of under m-commerce context? How the e-service influence the customer m-loylty? Do the individual factors and social fators have the moderating effect on these relationships? The testing of the model and hypotheses were accomplished via three studies.Study 1 utilized empirical research to develop a scale to measure the e-servive in m-commerce context, and indentify five dimensions which is important to customers in their assessment of the quality of m-commerce. These dimensions are Security, Efficiency, Design aesthetics, Price and Personalization. The final scale consists of 19 items. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to assess the reliability and validity of the scale.Study 2 explored the relationship between the five dimensions and customer m-loyalty. Followings are the main conclusions. (1) Security, Efficiency and Design aesthetice demensions have a significantly positive effect on the customer attitude loyalty. While, Price and Personliztion dimension do not significantly influence the customer attitude loyalty.(2) Secutiry, Efficiency and Price demensions have a significantly positive effect on customer behavior loyalty. However, Design aesthetics and Personliztion dimension do not have significant impact on the customer behavior loyalty.(3) Attitude loyalty has a significantly positive effect on behavior loyalty.Study 3 tested moderating effect of individual innovativeness on the relationship between e-service quality and m-loyalty in m-commerce context. The empirical result indicates that the moderating effect of individual innovativeness only exists in the relationship between e-service and attitude loyalty, while it has no significant effect on the relationship between e-service and behavior loyalty. This study also examined the moderating effect of social factor, and found that the social factor has significant moderating effect on the relationship between attitude loyalty and behavior loyalty.Finially academic and practical implications stemming from this study are discussed, and directions for further research are also presented.