How to Retain Your Customers: The Impact of Consumer Trust and Commitment in E-marketplaces

Retaining your customers is important for E-sellers to survive in the intensified competitive e-marketplace. We approach this issue from the perspective of “continuance intention”, a behavior intention that describes the willingness of customers to continue transacting with sellers. Drawing upon the trust-commitment theory, as well as institution-based trust factors, we examine two types of trustees, EC platform and individual E-sellers, in the process of maintaining customers in e-marketplaces. A model is theoretically developed to understand customers’ continuance intention to do business with specific E-sellers on an EC platform. An empirical study was conducted in three public universities to validate the model. The results suggest that affective commitment and calculative commitment jointly nurture customers’ continuance intention. In addition, five factors of institution-based trust strongly influence trust in EC platform, and then transfers to trust in individual E-sellers.