Customer Participation in Creating Site Brand Loyalty

This article explores the development of an e-business marketing model that capitalizes on customer participation and the likely consequences of such efforts, principally site brand loyalty. A conceptual model illustrates how consumers’ goals in visiting a website (task or experiential) affect their propensity to be site brand loyal and how characteristics of the site, including personalization and community, are related to brand loyalty. The model also shows that creating site brand loyalty leads to predictable affective, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes from customers, such as repeat visits to and patronage of the site, fewer intentions to defect to competitors, and more favorable attitudes toward the site. Case studies of corporate websites provide empirical evidence to support the model. The paper concludes by suggesting that customer participation in the e-business model fundamentally changes the way brands are developed. That is, producers no longer create an image for a brand and pass it on to © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, Inc.