Why do we purchase from e-retailers? : An explanatory study of the e-loyalty antecedents impact on consumers purchase intentions on the e-commerce market.

Abstract: Background: The e-commerce market has developed and it has become the new marketplace for current manufacturing and service industries. Customers’ behavior on the e-commerce market are changing with this Internet development and the competition is increasing. Customer’s purchase intention on the e-commerce market emerges when the customer compare brands and products in order to decide whether to purchase or not. Achieving e-loyalty is important for e-retailers to be profitable in the long run, which is defined as the customers’ positive attitude towards an e-retailer and results in repeat purchases. The primary antecedents of e-loyalty are e-trust, e-satisfaction and perceived value. Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explain how e-trust, e-satisfaction and perceived value impacts customers intentions to purchase from e-retailer(s). Methodology: This thesis had a quantitative research method and a deductive approach with an explanatory purpose. The research design was cross-sectional. An online questionnaire was used as the data collection method, which gathered 212 answers that passed the qualification question through convenience and snowball sampling. Reliability testing, validity testing and significance testing were used to test the data. A multilinear regression was used to test the hypothesis and analyse the results further. Findings: The original model of this thesis was tested and found insignificant. A new model was tested and found significant. 4,6 % of customers’ purchase intention could be explained to impact e-satisfaction. E-trust was found insignificant and had a negative impact on customers’ purchase intentions. Perceived value had a negative impact on the f-value and was therefore taken out of the regression analysis. Conclusion: The thesis contributes with a new conceptual model for the rejected hypothesis of e-trust impact on purchase intentions and the accepted hypothesis of e-satisfactions impact on purchase intentions. There are managerial implications of this study of how they should focus on e-satisfaction in their business practices, as well putting less focus on e-trust.