The fundamental reasons of e-consumers' loyalty to an online store

Previous studies of online stores have concentrated on identifying various attribute and benefit dimensions important to customers and neglected delving into underlying motives of customers engaging in shopping online. The current study identified personal values as underlying motivations, which have received less attention but carry important meanings in explaining customers loyal behavior. From the perspective of means-end chain theory, a hierarchical cognitive structural model consisting of personal values, attribute evaluations, and loyal behavior has been proposed. 353 questionnaire data were collected from the experienced online shoppers in South Korea and put into structural equation model to investigate the hierarchical effects of personal values, evaluations of online store attributes, and loyalty. The results show that three customers values such as matured society, happiness, and esteem life are the underlying beliefs motivating and/or deterring customers to shop online. But their impacts were diverse. Even though esteem life value had a positive effect on attribute evaluations, values for matured life and happiness had negative influences on loyalty. In addition, the results also demonstrated that customers favorable evaluation of product assortment eventually guides customers to be loyal to an online store. 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.