Innovativeness and involvement as determinants of website loyalty: II. Determinants of consumer loyalty in B2C e-commerce

Abstract

This paper is the second of the series of studies entitled “Innovativeness and Involvement as Determinants of Website Loyalty”, which was designed to test Foxall's [(1995). Cognitive styles of consumer initiators. Technovation 15(5), 269–288] style/involvement model in the context of Internet buyer behaviours. In this paper, a consumer Website loyalty model was proposed to describe how consumer transfer their existing brand loyalty in the traditional retail market to the same brand's Website in the B2C e-commerce market and how their perceived risk at the brand's Website mediates this loyalty transformation. Data were collected via an email invitation and Web-based questionnaire. One thousand and fourty four Taiwan Internet buyers randomly selected from the database of a well-known brand's Website have completed the survey. The multiple regression technique indicated the robustness of this loyalty transformation model (adjusted R 2 = 0.50 ). Findings further indicated the impact that consumers’ cognitive style/involvement have on their loyalty transformation model. After segmenting consumers via their DSI and PDI scores, the distinct loyalty transformation models are revealed: the adjusted R 2 of more-involved innovators’ loyalty transformation model was the highest (0.60), followed by more involved adaptors’ model (0.45), less involved innovators’ model (0.45), and finally, less involved adaptors’ model (0.42). Discussions of how consumers’ cognitive style and involvement level interact with each other and impact on the predictors of the Website loyalty are discussed. Proposals are made of how Website managers can use this knowledge to build marketing strategies.