Antecedents and consequences of online buying behavior: a mediation study

The study is aimed to identify the determinants of online buying behavior and their associations with the consequences of online buying behavior. The study adopted an e-loyalty framework and investigated causal links among functionality, usability, trust, commitment and loyalty. In addition, the study also attempted to investigate the mediating role of trust and commitment between online buying determinants and online purchasing outcomes. The demographic variables of age, gender and income are used as control variables.

An online questionnaire survey was conducted on Internet users by adopting purposive sampling technique. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed for measurement development, SEM was used for testing causal links, and percentile bootstrap with 95% confidence interval was used for mediation analysis.

Significant positive relationships were found among functionality, usability, trust, commitment and loyalty. Trust was found to fully mediate the effect of functionality and usability on loyalty. It was also found that commitment fully mediates the effect of functionality on loyalty.

However, caution is advised while generalizing results of this study. The study was conducted on online retailing only. The authors recommend future studies to extend the research in other e-commerce sectors and also to perform a comparative study between online and offline retailing.

This study provides some practical implications to website developers in designing a web page that caters the functionality and usability aspects in understanding e-loyalty formation process so that appropriate marketing strategies and tactics can be established to accommodate customized loyalty of each customer.

The study demonstrates the customer loyalty formation process in online retailing. Scanty literature has witnessed mediating role of trust and commitment in the relationships among functionality, usability and loyalty along with age, gender and monthly family income as controls in Indian sub-continent.