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Influencing Factors of Customer Loyalty in the Context of Social E-Commerce

Author(s)

Yongxiang Yang, Ruihua Wang, Yuexiang Zhang

Affiliation(s)

School of Management, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan, China

Abstract

Amid the rapid growth of social e-commerce, customer loyalty has emerged as a crucial element for businesses to sustain their competitive edge in the market. Nevertheless, there remains a lack of comprehensive academic exploration into the factors influencing customer loyalty and the mechanisms at play within the realm of social e-commerce. In response to this gap, the present study seeks to develop a comprehensive theoretical model that covers content quality, product quality, service quality, payment security and convenience, platform design and user experience, switching costs, and platform empowerment, among other exogenous variables. Through a carefully designed questionnaire survey, we successfully collected 406 valid data sets and used a variety of advanced statistical techniques, including factor analysis and Bootstrap method, to rigorously verify the influence mechanisms of each factor. The study findings indicate that content quality, product quality, service quality, payment security and convenience, platform design and user experience, switching costs, and platform empowerment all exert a significant positive influence on customer loyalty. Furthermore, we found that customer satisfaction plays an important mediating role between these influencing factors and customer loyalty. This study not only provides solid theoretical support for social e-commerce platforms to enhance customer loyalty but also offers practical suggestions for platforms to optimize user experience and enhance user stickiness.

Keywords

Social E-Commerce; Customer Loyalty; Customer Satisfaction; Influence Factors

References

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