After a decade of deceleration of digital economy, Internet has proved that it is possible to win users´ loyalty through the quality of the products and the contents. The results, obtained in a thesis of the University of Granada carried out by José Alberto Castañeda García and supervised by professor Teodoro Luque Martínez under the title “The behaviour of the Internet user: analysis of loyalty record and consequences, confirm this fact, besides the theories that point out the Internet as a mean that generates distrust, showing that, just like in the physical market, if sites offer quality, they can win a regular sector of the public over.
To analyse the special features of the Internet and its influence in the process of formation of the client’s loyalty, the researcher of the department of Marketing and Market Research has studied the behaviour of consumers in general portals like Terra, Yahoo or MSN, specific portals like PulevaSalud, in digital newspapers like El Mundo, El País, Marca or Ideal, and in sites of e-commerce like Carrefour and Puleva Salud, obtaining more than 4,300 valid surveys carried out through the telephone or the web.
Quality for confidence. Confidence for loyalty
Among the main results obtained through such surveys, Castañeda emphasizes that they have confirmed how the quality of the supply of the Web site or the quality of the product offered is a factor “significantly more important for the satisfaction of the customer than the quality of the design of the page”. They have also discovered how confidence is an essential factor in the formation of loyalty in e-commerce. In this sense, the author of the thesis refers to the loyalty achieved by these sites through their physical presence as one of the elements that foster costumer’s confidence.
The past habit of visit or purchase of a web customer is another factor of the main prediction variable of the future behaviour of online loyalty.
As for the importance of this study, the author of “The behaviour of the Internet user: analysis of loyalty record and consequences” emphasizes that the Internet is settling more and more as a sale and communication channel with the client that generates business that are helping in different ways to the global economic development. That is why it is necessary to carry out research projects to improve e-commerce, both from the point of view of the businessman and the user, and foster customer’s loyalty in the electronic context to support the survival and proliferation of business in the web thanks to the improvement of customers’ service.
Reference
Author of the thesis: José Alberto Castañeda García
Dpt. Marketing and Market Research
Tel. 958 242 350 / 958 242 347 (Department) E-mail. jalberto@ugr.es
