Research On Effects Of Different Types Of Loyalty Programs On Online Relational Benefits And Cross-buying

With the vigorous development of electronic commerce enterprise in our country,the competition is increasingly fierce,it becomes more and more difficult to attract new customers,and the cost is huge.Therefore,to effectively earn more profits from the existing customers to cross buy is an important means for the e-commerce enterprises.Based on this,many scholars made further research on the influencing factors of cross-buying,they had found four key factors mainly involved including customer factors,business factors,relationship factors,the crossover factors.Some scholars noticed that marketing tools maybe one of the determinats of cross-buying,such as direct mail and loyalty program.However,the effect of loyalty program are controversial both in academia and industry,and many scholars and managers of enterprises began to question whether the loyalty program really lead to customer loyalty,promote customer's cross purchase behavior.We argue that one of the possible reason maybe that loyalty program contains many elements and there are many types of programs,and there still differences in the industry and customer groups.It is necessary to further explore if all kinds of loyalty program can effectively promote the customer's cross purchase behavior.Most of the time,customers choose to participate in the loyalty program,and then become the loyal customers of the enterprise,the reason is that enterprises give customers a certain interest relationship in the loyalty program,namely the loyalty program to strengthen the perception of the relational benefits through developing the long-term relationship with customers.The relational benefits have four dimensions including confidence benefits,social benefits,special treatment benefits,royal benefits.Customers perceived relational benefits in different degrees in each loyalty programs.Relationship proneness refers to the stability and proneness of establishing relations with particular service provider.Not all customers are willing to establish long-term relations with customers,customer with high relationship proneness tend cross buy in loyalty program.The research focus of this article is that loyalty program's influence on the relational benefits and cross-buying,at the same time explore the relationship between the interests of the intermediary role between the loyalty program and cross-buying,and the moderating role of the relationship proneness between loyalty program and cross-buying.Based on the questionnaire survey of customers shopping online,using SPSS 22.0 to analyze the collected data,according to the results of data analysis we've got conclusions as follow,(1)loyalty program has a significant positive effect on cross purchase plan,the price promotion programs have the biggest influence to cross-buying,influence of coupons loyalty program less,club loyalty program lesser,competition and games loyalty program minimal impact on cross-buying.(2)the loyalty program has a significant positive effect on relational benefits.Customers can perceive the highest confidence benefits,special treatment benefits and royal benefits in the price promotion loyalty program,and the highest social benefits are perceived in the club loyalty programs.(3)Relational benefits have significant positive effects on cross purchase.Benefits of confidence,special treatment and royalty significant impact on cross-buying,but the social benefits has no significant impact on cross-buying online.(4)The relational benefits play a mediation role in the loyalty program and cross-buying.And the benefits of confidence,special treatment and royalty play an mediating role between the loyalty program and cross purchase,but social benefits'mediating role is not obvious.(5)The relationship proneness play a moderator role between the loyalty program and cross-buying.In the loyalty program,customers who have stronger relationship proneness tend to cross buy.Based on the conclusions above,we put forward the following Suggestions:(1)Choose a proper type of loyalty program.In order to effectively integrate resources,the designation of loyalty program should meet the need of customers and improve the experience of shopping online.(2)During the running of the program,managers should focus on improving the customer perceived relational benefits interests of all aspects.(3)Not all customers are willing to develop relations with the company.In order to maximize the utilization of limited resources,the companies should invite customers with higher relationship proneness to participate in loyalty programs.