Comfort your Online Customer: Quality, Trust, and Loyalty on the Internet

In e-commerce, loyal customers are considered extremely valuable. Loyalty is generally attributed to satisfaction with the quality of service. Since online transactions involve many uncertainties for the customer, trust is a condition for exchange. Trust in the electronic medium – here called “e-trust” – is believed to increase online customer loyalty, but empirical confirmations are scarce. The present study empirically investigates the roles of service quality, satisfaction and trust in an e-commerce context. In the study, e-trust is found to directly affect loyalty. The e-service quality dimension of assurance, i.e. Trusting the merchant, influences loyalty via e-trust and e-satisfaction. Other e-quality dimensions, such as ease of use, e-scape, responsiveness, and customization influence e-loyalty mainly indirectly, via satisfaction. Managerial implications and suggestions for further research are provided