Effects of Website Interactivity on e-Loyalty: A Social Exchange Perspective

This study examines the impact of major considerations of commercial website design and management, website interactivity, the important performance factor, and customer loyalty. Meaningful interactions with existing and potential customers allow e-commerce firms to enhance customer loyalty by providing satisfactory customer experience. Customer loyalty is a composite construct, yet consists of multiple dimensions that do not necessarily contribute to repeat purchase in the same manner. Guided by the concept of social exchange in social psychology, this study investigates the causal effect of website interactivity on two conceptually distinctive types of website loyalty—transactional loyalty and relational loyalty. This paper finds positive effects of website loyalty on both types of loyalty, while revealing positive effects of transactional loyalty on relational loyalty and overall loyalty. Furthermore, relational loyalty is found to contribute more to overall loyalty than transactional loyalty. E-commerce firms are advised to offer attractive incentives in a systematical manner to gradually convert more temporary transactional loyalty to more long-term relational loyalty. Finally, firms must devise a portfolio of different marketing strategies to cater to the customers located on different points on transactional loyalty.