The Impact Of Customer Loyalty On Customer Channel Migration Intention On E-commerce Platform

Third-party E-commerce platforms,such as Amazon and Taobao,provide a marketplace for sellers and customers to conduct transactions and play an intermediary role.Currently,more and more sellers are operating on these platforms while also opening up their private online channels such as official websites,mobile applications,and miniprograms.In order to fully leverage the customer resources accumulated through the platform and benefit the entire channel as a whole,sellers recommend their own channels to their customers from platform,inviting them to migrate from platforms to their private channels.This process of customers shifting from a seller’s platform channel to its private channel is called channel migration.To explore the factors and mechanisms affecting customer channel migration,as well as the boundary conditions,this essay proposes customer loyalty as an independent variable,perceived value and perceived risk as mediating variables,and reward types offered by sellers as a moderating variable.To verify the model,this essay conducted four empirical studies.First,study 1 uses data from Tmall,Baidu and WeChat search engines to confirm each seller’s private channel presence.The Chi-square test results show that some sellers operate both on platforms and their channels,and the larger the customer group a seller has,the higher the likelihood they possess private channels.Second,study 2 conducts a survey,which confirms that it is common that sellers invite customers on platforms to use their private channels,and provide preliminary evidence that customer loyalty has a significant impact on customer channel migration willingness,thus customers more loyal to the seller is more willing to migrate to the seller’s private channel.Study 3 proves differences in the levels of perceived value and perceived risk of different loyal customers can explain differences in their willingness to migrate channels.Finally,study 4 designs an experiment to explore what reward type sellers can provide to customers to stimulate higher levels of customer channel migration willingness.The results show that economic reward can significantly increase the perceived value of channel migration for customers more loyal to the platform,leading to higher level of migration willingness.For customers more loyal to the seller,there is no significant difference in perceived value or willingness to migrate between the two reward types.In terms of theoretical significance,this essay focuses on a new type of customer channel migration path,namely,from a seller’s platform channel to its private channel,and proposes that the relationship between customers,platforms,and sellers should be considered in this scenario.This enriches the research on customer channel migration and expands the understanding of the impact of customer loyalty on customer behavior.Practically,this essay provides rational suggestions for sellers to more effectively acquire customers for their private channels and highlights the potential risk of the platform as an intermediary.