Build Customer Loyalty Using Microblog - A Relationship Perspective

In recent years, micro-blog, a kind of social network service (SNS), has been adopted as a popular way for people to interact with their significant others. Nowadays, people can exchange short messages via various digital devices through micro-blog. Witnessing this trend, practitioners strive hard to seek opportunities in utilizing micro-blog for better customer reach. Numerous studies have also investigated this phenomenon. While previous studies primarily placed their focus on people’s motivation to use SNS, usage pattern and potential applications in various fields, to our best knowledge, Research on microblog is still in its infancy and the core concept of SNS, i.e. social relationship, is rarely addressed. This study thus proposed a framework to investigate the effects that micro-blog is to exert on consumer’s relationship with firms. Results suggested that system quality, interaction quality, and relationship benefits are influential to relationship quality, which contributes to loyalty. Implications of research findings are also discussed in this study.