Internet brand loyalty and technological attributes: An empirical investigation

Abstract

Brand loyalty is important for the success of businesses. Although customer acquisition is an expensive process, studies have shown that companies may still generate increasing profits from those long-term relationships with consumers. However, the unique economics of e-businesses where consumers enjoy product/service comparisons at low search costs seems to erode brand loyalty on the Internet. As e-commerce becomes more pervasive, there is an urgency to better comprehend this construct of e-loyalty. Our research aims to contribute some insights as to how technological characteristics, i.e. Website quality and product/technology innovation, can drive the formation of brand loyalty via the mediating influence of consumer satisfaction. We conduct two studies to increase the generalizability of our findings. By performing confirmatory factor analysis and least squares regressions to the two datasets collected, we show that a well-designed Website and innovative products/services or state-of-the-art technologies are able to strengthen satisfaction, which in turn, enhances e-loyalty.