Examining the Value, Satisfaction, and Loyalty Relationship Under Online Framework Using PLS-ANN

Abstract

Electronic commerce has gained popularity over the years and forced the businesses to go online in order to achieve competitive advantages. Digitalization has led to the dynamicity of markets and this poses a question on the loyalty of customers towards these e-commerce websites.This chapter attempts to examine the relationship between website service quality (WSQ), social media reviews (SMR), customer value (CV), customer satisfaction (CS), and website loyalty (LOY); with the moderating effect of switching cost. Also, the most influential predictor in each cause-effect relationship is determined. The hypothesized conceptual framework is validated using a two-stage approach. In the first stage, the hypotheses are tested and path loadings are generated using PLS-SEM approach. Also, the moderating effect is studied using PLS. Second stage utilizes the advantages of artificial neural network (ANN) to obtain the best explanatory variable in each independent-dependent association.