Consumer Satisfaction and Loyalty in Digital Markets: Exploring the Impact of Their Antecedents

Customer loyalty is even more important in the e-commerce since the costs of serving customers decrease as long as the customers’ number increases. Convenience, variety seeking, trust, security, social interaction, returns policy are helpful elements to predict e-satisfaction, and this latter, constitutes the primary cause of e-loyalty. The aim of the paper is to better explore the impact of different drivers in enhancing the satisfaction and loyalty perceived by customer when purchasing online in a B2C context. Results show that not all the antecedents represent drivers enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. In particular, the constructs related to ease of use and trust on the e-retailer/s are found to be always positively linked to all the three dependent variables (satisfaction, repurchase intention and WOM), while monetary savings and security do not impact on these three outcomes. Considering the effect of return policy, it impacts both on satisfaction and overall loyalty.