CRM tools and their impact on relationship quality and loyalty in e-tailing

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising

Volumn 1, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 331-349

  Fassott, Georg ^a  

^a Rheinland Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern Landau   (Germany)

Author keywords

customer relationship management; e tailing; LISREL

Indexed keywords

EID: 39149086611     PISSN: 14775212     EISSN: 17418100     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1504/IJIMA.2004.006328     Document Type: Article

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41. For an overview of studies on the effectiveness of relationship marketing instruments in retailing and other industries see Verhoef (2003).
42. The goal of this study was not to replicate the DOI model. However, as the DOI model was assessed very promising for the research questions, the modifications were held to a minimum. Thus, the empirical study comes quite close to what Easley et al. (2000) call a type III replication and is a step towards empirical generalisation.
43. The following indicators were derived from the DOI study. Perceived relationship investment: this online shop makes efforts to increase regular customers’ loyalty; this online shop makes various efforts to improve its tie with regular customers; this online shop really cares about keeping regular customers. Relationship satisfaction: I am happy with the efforts this online shop is making towards regular customers like me; as a regular customer, I have a high-quality relationship with this online shop; I am satisfied with the relationship I have with this store. Trust: I have trust in the offers of this online shop; I have trust in the technical features of the online shop (e.g. data security); the presentation of the offers in this online shop gives me a trustworthy impression. Commitment: even if a product would be currently out of stock in this online shop, I would not take the effort to search for it in a different online shop; even if a product would not be offered by this online shop, I would not take the effort to search for it in a different online shop; even if I feel that the price for a product is quite high in this online shop, I would not take the effort to search for it in a different online shop.
44. Note that for the full model the mediation effect of relationship quality on the tools-loyalty relationship cannot be identified because the effect of CRM tools on relationship quality is already fully mediated by perceived investment. Note also that the VAF-score is greater than 100%, when the direct and indirect paths are of opposite sign. While this normally indicates a suppressor effect of the mediating variable, in the present analysis it is just an ‘empirical’ suppression (Iacobucci and Duhachek, 2003) as the direct path between the independent and the dependent variable is expected to be zero. Accordingly, the t-scores show that the path coefficients off all the direct paths are not significantly different from zero.