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ABSTRACT
The following exploratory study considers a model explaining brand loyalty relative to the electronic Customer Relationship Management (hereafter referred to as eCRM) industry. The model focuses specifically on B2B relationships, and includes customer satisfaction, attitude, brand trust, affect, value, and resistance to change as model constructs. This model, exploratory in nature, begins to help sift out the relative direct and indirect influences of an increasingly complex number of known antecedents to customer loyalty. Particularly noteworthy is our failure to find a direct relationship between e-satisfaction and loyalty. Rather, we find that the e-satisfaction loyalty relationship appears mediated by brand attitudes in this study. We also report evidence that post-consumption affect appears more closely related to brand attitude than e-satisfaction. Service provider trust also emerges as an important antecedent to brand attitude and satisfaction in this exploratory study. Managerial and research implications of the tentative results reported herein are presented and discussed.
INTRODUCTION
Technology and the Internet are having a profound effect on marketing (Bitner, Brown, and Mueter 2000). One area particularly affected has been the automation of customer service, or eService. eService continues to grow as a major marketing emphasis, and has been defined by De Ruyter, Wetzels, and Kleijnen (2001, p. 186) as "...an interactive, content-centered and Internet-based customer service, driven by the customer and integrated with related organizational customer support processes and technologies with the goal of strengthening the customer-service provider relationship." Rust and Kannan (2002) suggest that eService can best be considered as an overarching customer-centric concept that encompasses all members of marketing channels. Rust and Kannan (2002) further suggest that eService subsumes concepts such as customer/citizen relationship management (CRM), one-to-one marketing, and customer care, among others.
The setting for the current research involves the eCRM software applications/service industry. eCRM can be defined as ... "A Web-centric approach to synchronizing customer relationships across communication channels, business functions, and audiences" (Forrester Research 2001). The eCRM industry involves software and service providers who assist marketers in managing their customer relationships via technology (see www.crmguru or www.ecrmguide.com/ for online introductions to this industry). eCRM software includes software related to e-mail management, knowledge base development, database management, and online IP chat capabilities (among others). Companies today are increasingly providing customer service with the...