Exploring the Customer Relationship Management Practices of Online Shopping Malls in Hong Kong

Abstract

Online shopping malls (such as Taobao and Tmall.com) are a new trend in the online environment. These malls offer products from many different stores in a central location. Building high quality relationships with customers is vital for online shopping malls and customer relationship management (CRM) is a widely used concept for building these relationships. Previous studies of offline platforms have examined the online platforms of individual companies. However, few studies have discussed the CRM practices of online shopping malls. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature. A mixed-method approach with both a survey (a quantitative study) and an in-depth interview (a qualitative study) is used. Four hundred people are interviewed for the quantitative study in Hong Kong to collect data to test the hypotheses. SPSS is used to conduct statistics analysis such as reliability test, Correction and t-test. The results show that there are positive relationships between information quality, system quality, service quality, and perceived relationship quality. These findings could provide useful insights for e-commerce. An in-depth interview is also conducted with an expert in the e-commerce industry to gain more insights into industry development.