Study on the impacts of service quality and customer satisfaction on customer loyalty in B2C e-commerce

In e-commerce, loyal customers are considered extremely valuable. However, little attention has been given in the literature to understand customer loyalty and its antecedents especially in e-commerce settings. The present study empirically investigates the impacts of service quality, customer satisfaction on customer loyalty in a B2C e-commerce context. Factor analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) are conducted based on a sample from undergraduate student respondents. Results indicate that, although the direct effect of service quality on customer loyalty is significant, the indirect effect (with customer satisfaction playing a mediating role) is a stronger driver for customer loyalty. E-commerce managers are recommended to devise operations and marketing strategies that focus on service quality dimensions in order to enhance customer satisfaction and, in turn, foster loyalty. The present study focuses only on the B2C e-commerce and uses convenience sampling method. Future research should examine other types of e-commerce settings with random sampling method.