What Makes You E-loyal? : A descriptive study on how customers form e-loyalty online.

Abstract: With the technology and internet development, customers are moving towards online shopping, which made the new phenomena of e-loyalty emerge out of traditional loyalty. The literature on e-loyalty has been reviewed, and the most influential antecedents to e-loyalty formation were studied in this research, e-satisfaction, and e-trust. Also, the e-tail quality dimensions were studied in this research, fulfillment/reliability, website design, customer service, and security/privacy since these dimensions majorly affect e-satisfaction and e-trust, contributing to forming e-loyalty. This research describes how e-loyalty is being formed online from a customer’s perspective since multiple processes are involved in the formation. This purpose will be reached by finding out what contributes to forming e-loyalty online from a customer’s perspective. In order to answer this research question and capture the customer’s perspective, a qualitative study was conducted with a deductive approach. Six semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with participants who have online shopping experiences and are e-loyal to any e-commerce website. This thesis resulted in two different processes contributing to forming e-loyalty online from a customer’s perspective. The first process involves e-satisfaction contributing to form e-loyalty, and the second process involves e-trust contributing to form e-loyalty. Both processes have a specific order to form e-loyalty because the factors affect and depend on each other in a particular pattern.