The purpose of this study is to examine the formation of customer e-loyalty to a social shopping website. The formation of customer e-loyalty to a social shopping website is examined based on cognitive-affective-conative-action loyalty framework. This study proposes that customer e-loyalty is strongly associated with website quality, e-satisfaction and participation. Seven website attributes (i.e., visual aesthetics, navigation, efficiency, user friendliness, security/privacy, entertainment and community driveness) identified in previous research are employed to measure website quality that affects e-loyalty formation. There are 449 data collected from a southwestern university in the U.S., but only the responses from 333 Pinterest users are used to test the hypotheses. Exploratory factor analysis is used to identify dimensionality of social shopping website attributes, and multiple regression and linear regression analysis are conducted to test hypotheses in this study. Results of the study indicate that five significant factors including efficiency, user friendliness, security/privacy, entertainment and community driveness are directly associated with customer e-loyalty. Indeed, such website quality factors as the determinant of cognitive e-loyalty directly affect overall customer satisfaction (affective e-loyalty), customer purchase/return intention to the website (conative e-loyalty), and customer participation, positive eWOM and co-shopping (action e-loyalty). The findings of this study have provided evidence that social shopping website quality dimensions are directly associated with customer e-loyalty to the website. Also, the findings have shown important implications to ensure quality website attributes to increase customer loyalty to a social shopping website.

This study explored attributes of a Facebook brand page (FBP). Seven variables were derived from the framework and applied to FBPs. The goals of this research were to discover which attributes contribute to a successful FBP, determine which attributes increase purchase intentions, and help marketers determine where to focus their efforts. A total of 421 surveys were gathered from men and women ages 18 and older. The methods of this research included factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. Results yielded two loading factors for the trustworthiness variable and supported hypotheses of trustworthiness increasing purchase intentions. It was also discovered that participation positively influences purchase intentions. It is advised that information content be monitored to avoid information overload.

Social endorsements are user-generated endorsements of products or services, such as “likes” and personal collections, in an online social platform. We examine the effect of prior social endorsements on subsequent users’ tendency to endorse or examine a product in a social shopping context, where a social platform connect consumers and enable a collaborative shopping experience. This research consists of two parts. In part I, we identify two ways prior social endorsements can affect subsequent user behavior: as a crowd endorsement, which is an aggregate number of endorsements a product receives for anyone who comes across the product, and as a friend endorsement, which is an endorsement with the endorser’s identity delivered only to the endorser’s friends or followers. Using a panel data of 1656 products on a leading social shopping platform, we quantify the relationship between crowd and friend endorsements and subsequent examination (“click”) and endorsement (“like”) of the products, noting that examination is a private behavior while endorsement is a public behavior. Our results are consistent with the identity signaling theory where identity-conscious consumers converge with the aspiration group (the followers) in their public behavior (e.g. endorsement) and diverge from the avoidance groups (the crowd). We also find differences between public and private behaviors. Moreover, the symbolic nature of social shopping platform trumps the traditional dichotomy of symbolic/functional product attributes. Part II of this study seeks to clarify the underlying mechanism through lab experiments. We hypothesize that consumers’ evaluative attitude, specifically the value-expressive type, moderates the relationship between crowd and friend endorsements and a focal user’s product choice. Our initial results of the second study show support for this idea in the cases when the product choice is not obvious.

No description available.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, countless studies have been conducted about the pandemic regarding people's physical and mental health, but there is a significant gap on the persistent effects on consumer behaviour. Hence, this thesis aimed to investigate if there is a relationship between the social constraints as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the potential increased engagement of post-purchase behaviour. The research focused exclusively on Swedish female millennials who are active social media users.    The research used a deductive approach by formulating hypotheses based on already existing theories. The explanatory design was used when aiming to investigate a causal relationship between two variables, i.e., prior to the pandemic compared to today. Further, a quantitative strategy was used by collecting primary data through a questionnaire, which thereafter was analysed through SPSS, using the paired sample t-test. To target the desired sample a convenience sampling method was used which collected a total of 226 respondents, with 197 valid participants. The sample was collected through several Facebook groups, combined with the utilizing of the authors own social media channels. Since this study aimed to measure engagement, the key concepts were converted in the survey questions to more specific terms, by a modified existing scale. Indicators were established to be able to measure the engagement under controlled conditions.   Furthermore, the results from the statistical tests resulted in a p-value to confirm or reject the null hypothesis, followed by a correlation coefficient value to determine the strength of the relationship. The empirical findings combined indicated significant evidence that because of the social constraints since the COVID-19 outbreak, there has been an increased engagement in the post-purchase behaviour on social media for Swedish female millennials. This was confirmed through a p-value of 0.000 in the t-tests for all seven hypotheses. Furthermore, all tests show correlation values between 0.449 and 0.617, which means that all the existing relationships are positive.    This means that during the period when COVID-19 has been an active societal problem with all its effects, the new living conditions have entailed an increased involvement in post-purchase behaviour on social media for Swedish female millennials. If corporations take these changed behaviours in consideration and adapt the marketing strategy accordingly, it  can contribute to increased sales as the credibility of the brand gets strengthened through the transparency that the customer base values.