Information Technology Reference
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introduCtion
intangible services (e.g., ISP services) should be
treated differently from tangible goods is that
consumers have more difficulty evaluating the
quality of intangible services than physical goods
prior to, during, and after consumption (Grove,
Pickett, & Laband, 1995; Rushton & Carson,
1989). It has been suggested that the advertising
and promotion for intangible services should
differ from those of physical goods (Rushton &
Carson, 1989). This study investigates customers
using an ISP service and, through an examination
of gender differences, brings implications for IT
marketers. Second, gender generally is neglected
in IT behavioral research (Gefen & Straub, 1997).
This study is one of the earliest to conceptualize
and to test a model of IT relationship quality that
includes gender as a moderator. Since gender
generally is acknowledged to influence profoundly
one's response to marketing strategies (Brady &
Robertson, 1999; Laroche, Saad, Cleveland, &
Browne, 2000; Mattila, Grandey, & Fisk, 2003;
Maxwell, 1999), specifying the moderating im-
pacts of gender can guide IT service providers to
design different strategies for different custom-
ers and, consequently, achieve high relationship
quality and customer loyalty.
A battle for e-commerce is rising rapidly in
Taiwan, one of the most competitive markets
around the globe. Many emerging e-commerce
companies, especially those that focus on B2C
(business-to-consumer) are struggling to get
more customers. These companies devote a large
amount of their investment to state-of-the-art
infrastructure and promotion, and extensively to
outright customer subsidies. For instance, many
ISPs (Internet service providers) are offering
giveaways (e.g., MP3 players) or price discounts
for new customers who sign up during a specific
period of time.
There is no question that a focused approach to
establishing the strengths and unique competitive
edge of a company is necessary for survival, given
the intense competition. Notably, the continuance
of IT usage at the individual user level is crucial to
many business-to-customer electronic commerce
firms, such as ISPs, online retailers, online banks,
online brokerages, online travel agencies, and so
forth (Bhattacherjee, 2001). However, such con-
tinuance relies on achieving relationship quality
and customer loyalty. As indicated by Chen and
Hitt (2002), the expectation of B2C companies is
that early investments in customer acquisition will
result in a long-term stream of profits from loyal
customers, which will offset the costs. Previous
studies have demonstrated the importance of re-
lationship quality and loyalty and their impact on
firm profitability and customer retention (Crosby,
Evans, & Cowles, 1990; Tam & Wong, 2001), but
the first step in effectively managing relationship
quality and customer loyalty in IT service contexts
is identifying their antecedents. This study iden-
tifies the critical customer loyalty determinants
from the perspective of users and also clarifies
their importance in loyalty formation.
This study differs from previous works in
two important ways. First, this work focuses on
the study of relationship quality in the market-
ing of an intangible ISP service. The reason that
researCh Framework and
hypothesis development
The conceptual model, displayed in Figure 1, is
a direct modification of those given by Crosby et
al. (1990) and Lin and Ding (2005). The model
not only includes relational selling behavior and
expertise (Crosby et al., 1990) but also integrates
two key variables specific to the IT service field:
perceived network quality (Kettinger & Lee,
1994) and service recovery (Bob, 1989), which
are rarely tested in IT service contexts.
In the proposed model, expertise, relational
selling behavior, perceived network quality, and
service recovery indirectly influence customer
loyalty through the mediation of relationship
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