THE CUSTOMER E-LOYALTY IN ONLINE RETAILING: A PROPOSAL OF A MEASUREMENT SCALE

Research aim: Nowadays, marketing theory is aiming more and more to measure customers’ retention in terms of loyalty attitude towards product and service offered by the firms. While the marketing scholars exploring customer loyalty for the traditional retailing industry are many, very few are the ones investigating the Customer e-Loyalty (CeL) in the online context. The aim of this research proposal is to define a conceptual model of measurement for customers’ loyalty for digital retailers (e-commerce retailers, e-banking retailers, e-service providers). Methodology: In order to select the latent and manifest variables of a CeL scale of measurement a literature review has been implemented. The latent variables proposed in literature to measure the CeL construct have been reorganized in a meta-model proposal innovating on the outcomes side respect to the pre-existing ones. Furthermore, in order to adopt the items much more robust in investigating each latent variable, a desk analysis has been conducted on several questionnaires’ databases to identify the ones more frequentely adopted in managerial and research context. The next steps of the reserch project will be to test this conceptual (meta) model, trough a structural equation model (SEM) on a sample of Italian digital users, who makes online purchases. Findings: A conceptual model of CeL measurement has been proposed in terms of clear understanding of its manifest and latent variables. In a short run also a statistical assestment of this conceptual model is expected, trying to investigate its reliability and generalizability. Theoretical implication and originality of the study is to propose for marketing and retailing literature a meta model and a measurement scale for CeL to be tested in several geographical settings and industries. Managerial Implication: Once the model will be tested in scientific community the clear understanding of the postulated relationships among the latent variables might encourage the online retailer to figure out appropriate course of actions to win customers’ trust by providing better services in order to create a loyal customer base in a digital context. The contribute aims to expand the existing debate on the dimensionality and generalizability of Customer e-Loyalty measurement model.