Enhancing User Loyalty through Network Externality: An Empirical Study on B2B Platform

Loyal users are vital to the future of B2B platform with rapid development and intensive competitions. This study examines how network externality, in terms of direct network externality and indirect network externality, enhances B2B platform users' perceived value, and how such perception of value, in turn, influences their satisfaction and loyalty. First, we develop a conceptual model to describe the formation mechanism of user (seller) loyalty on B2B platform. Second, based on literature home and abroad, we develop a questionnaire. With a well-known B2B platform, we get 1,348 valid samples. At last, using structural equation modeling approach, we get the conceptual model fitted. The empirical results show that: network externality can be used as pre-drivers of perceived value thereby affecting user loyalty, but it has no direct influence on user satisfaction.