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Top1. Introduction
E-commerce a commercial activity in which selling and buying of goods or services is done through internet. Online shopping was invented by Michael Aldrich in 1979. Since that time, this type of shopping has grown amazingly (Turban et al., 2000). As a result of major growth in technologies of E-commerce, the number of online shops has grown exponentially. This has created a lot of challenges in business and commercial activities. Because of highly-competitive nature of this type of business activity, online shops need something beyond low prices or inventive products. Commercial organizations need to focus on customer experience (Gentile et al., 2007). Customers’ online experiences depend on pictures, forms, quality of information, and video advertising. Such experiences do not depend on real life activities, because customers cannot directly see and touch the goods before buying them (Pine and Gilmore, 2011).
On the other hand, in the competitive environment of markets, attracting new customers has become more difficult and the profits that can be obtained from loyal customers have grown. Therefore, companies have shifted their attentions from pure customers’ satisfaction to strengthening customer loyalty. Strengthening customer loyalty has become a key factor for online shops to achieve success and lasting profits. The goal of this paper is to investigate the impact of customer experience on customer loyalty in online-purchasing.
The main hypotheses of this study are analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) methodology. The case study is conducted in the biggest electronic-store in Iran. The structural model, measurement model, and questionnaire, are developed, proposed, prepared on the basis of four main hypotheses supported through a deep literature review of relevant past research works as follows:
H1: Customer online purchasing experience has impact on perceived value;
H2: Perceived value of customers has impact on their satisfaction;
H3: Customer satisfaction has an impact on their loyalty;
H4: Customer online purchasing experience has a direct major impact on customer loyalty.
The reasons behind confirming or rejecting each hypothesis have been presented and some strategies have been suggested to solve the problems of online business activities.
The next sections of this paper are organized as follows. In Section 2, the literature of past works is reviewed. In Section 3, the main hypotheses and conceptual model of the research including structure model, main hypotheses, and secondary hypotheses are presented. The methodology of the research including data gathering, tests, statistical analysis, main steps of SEM procedure, fitness statistics, and results are discussed in Section 4. Finally, the conclusions are presented in Section 5.