Encounter-based antecedents of e-customer citizenship behaviors

Abstract

Purpose – In the marketing and consumer behavior literature, much remains to be explained about customer citizenship behavior in a highly technological e-retailing context. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a survey of 186 e-shoppers which was conducted grounded in the social exchange theory. Design/methodology/approach – Structural equation modeling is used to test the proposed model. Findings – The results provide support that e-customer familiarity with an e-store and facilitating conditions provided by an e-retailer influence e-customers ' e-satisfaction, e-loyalty, and e-commitment with an e-retailer, all of which exert different effects on three dimensions of e-customer citizenship behavior. Practical implications – The results of this study offer e-retailers a way to stay ahead of their competitors by focusing on online attributes that are difficult to duplicate when it comes to customer relationship such as e-loyalty, e-commitment and e-customer citizenship behavior. Originality/value – This study represents one of the initial attempts to validate a customer citizenship behavior model in an e-retailing setting using e-store familiarization and facilitating conditions as the primary determinants for developing e-store attitudes and behaviors among e-shoppers.

Personality Antecedents of Customer Citizenship Behaviors in Online Shopping Situations

“…Consistent with past research (Anaza & Zhao, ; Chen, Chen, & Farn, ; Groth, ; Yi & Gong, ), this study argues that customer satisfaction positively influences customer citizenship behaviors. Groth (), for instance, found that customers satisfied with the services provided by a business were more inclined to recommend the business to family and friends, help other customers with their shopping needs, and provide feedback to the company and its employees.…”

“…Identified by terms such as customer organizational citizenship behaviors (Bove et al., ), customer extra‐role behaviors (Ahearne, Bhattacharya, & Gruen, ), customer discretionary behaviors (Ford, ), customer helping behaviors (Johnson & Rapp, ), and customer voluntary performance (Bettencourt, ), these behaviors are believed to fall outside the role and expectations of what customers are required to do before, during, and after the acquisition of a product or service. Stemming from Groth's () definition, Anaza and Zhao () purport that online shoppers who engage in positive extra‐role behaviors are classified as good online citizens because their actions help online retailers improve overall service delivery to online shoppers. Because online service encounters require customers to become partial employees in the production of their own services (e.g., self‐booking a hotel reservation online rather than using a travel agent), the willingness of a customer to go beyond their prescribed in‐role expectation, by exhibiting gestures that benefit both the firm and other consumers, suggest that these customers are committed to seeing the online retailer succeed.…”

“…Recommendation is defined as the voluntary creation and distribution of messages by online shoppers to other e‐shoppers, as a means of spreading positive information about the firm and/or its products/services (Anaza & Zhao, ). Recommendation should not be confused with electronic word‐of‐mouth (eWOM), but must be viewed as a concept that tackles online opinion forwarding rather than opinion seeking or opinion leadership (Chu & Kim, ).…”

Exploring the customer's intention to switch firms: The role of customer‐related antecedents

“…The relationship between CCB and satisfaction has been analyzed in numerous studies (Anaza, & Zhao, ; Groth, ; Vega‐Vázquez, Revilla‐Camacho, and Cossío‐Silva, ; Yi, & Gong, ). Most studies have revealed a significant direct effect of satisfaction on CCB.…”

The influence of guanxi on physical distribution service quality availability in e-commerce sourcing fashion garments from China

“…The demand for improvements has resulted in speeding up the supply process such as the use of web-based solutions (Anaza and Zhao, 2013). But the supply side has needed to respond to more efficient and effective methods of delivery from the producer through to the final destination (Forsberg and Towers, 2007).…”