E-commerce website customer engagement: Delineating the role of UTAUT, vividness, and compulsion

Abstract

This study used the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework to explore factors that help build customer engagement (CE) and customer trust towards such platforms. Doing so, it draws upon data collected from customers of a leading Iranian e-commerce platform (n = 819), to investigate the relationships between enabling antecedents (website vividness, effort expectation, compulsion) and behavioural responses (customer loyalty, trust) in shaping post-experience outcomes (loyalty, experience satisfaction). Apart from two hypotheses (effect of performance expectation and social influence on customer trust), the rest of the hypotheses of the work were supported. This study integrates the SOR framework with the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) dimensions to propose and validate the e-commerce website factors capable of enhancing CE, a multi-dimensional construct, and trust. Further, this work guides e-commerce website managers with website-based enablers that can help generate such engagement to enthuse trust and loyalty in its consumers.