Business Research Methods

Create an Opportunity Statement

In an increasingly competitive market, adding e-business will help the organization build loyalty in consumers, which is the key factor in winning market share and developing sustainable competitive advantage.

Develop Constructs of the Opportunity

Given that an e-business is an electronic channel through which consumers receive products/services, trust in electronic channel, customer satisfaction with e-service, and perceived value of products/services, it should influence the decision of customers to participate in repeat purchases from the same website.

Operational Definition from the Constructs

Customer satisfaction, perceived value, and commitment are separate constructs that combine to determine the loyalty, with commitment exerting a stronger influence than trust, customer satisfaction and perceived value. Customer satisfaction and perceived value are also indirectly related to loyalty through commitment.

Identify the Unit of Measure with each of the Constructs

To ensure the content validity of the scales, the items selected must represent the concept about which generalizations are to be made.

What's in the bag? Business of Software 2010

moo.com business cards

English: Customer satisfaction rating scale

Therefore, items selected for the constructs were mainly adapted from prior studies to ensure content validity. Customer satisfaction, trust, perceived value, and attitudinal commitment represent important determinants of purchase loyalty. Loyalty includes some degree of predispositional commitment toward a brand. Therefore, our notion of customer loyalty in this study includes both attitudinal commitment and behavioral purchase loyalty (see Figure 1).

Brand commitment in relationship marketing, trust, customer satisfaction, and perceived value are each related to both commitment and loyalty, consistent with the concept of one-to-one marketing relationships. Trust is vital in many business relationships, especially those containing an element of risk. Lacking effective regulation in the Internet context, consumers have to trust that the e-service vendor will not engage in harmful opportunistic behaviors, or else the overwhelming social complexity will cause them to avoid purchasing (Gefen, 2000). Some researchers have suggested that...