Rapid growth of the internet and information technology help people communicate with others around the world through computers. The developing development of virtual communities¡]VCs¡^gather people with the same personalities in a VC website. VCs are not only a place of providing information and social contact for users, but also a precise market segment for marketers. The users of VCs are interested in the information provided within the VCs; therefore, marketers can reach potential customers in VCs more effectively. If the potential customers have high loyalty to a VC, they will consider the information provided by a VC as more important, their opinions on the product will be easily affected, and, ultimately, their purchasing decision will be influenced.
Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to analyze the loyalty of VC users to understand how VCs affect their purchasing decisions based on the EKB model by assuming VCs are external information sources, reference groups, and channels of post-purchase dissonance. Factors that affect VC users, including ¡uTechnology and Service¡v,¡uInformation Content¡v, and¡uEmotional Interact¡v, can be used to discover different types of loyalties of VC users and to understand if VC users are influenced by VCs when purchasing.
A web survey was conducted on three VC websites discussing cosmetics¡]Fashion Guide, Urcosme and yam hercafe¡^,from January 18, 2008 to February 1, 2008 and received 416 valid samples. After analyzing the valid samples, the result suggested that¡G
1. ¡uInformation Content¡vis the most critical factor among the three factors of affecting loyalty of VC users.
2. VC users with a high level of loyalty who depend on the information provided by VC web sites consider VC websites as reference groups and are highly influenced by the site¡¦s recommendations
3. The users of high loyalty are affected by VC websites when purchasing. They search information in VCs before shopping, trust the information of VCs, are affected more easily by other VC users and recommend products to VC users or friends. Aside from this, they spend more time on the internet and VC websites than users of spurious loyalty.
4. The loyalty to and purchasing influence caused by a VC of female users are higher than male users as they consider the information provided by VCs more important. Users of low education levels have higher loyalties than those of higher education levels, however students are more easily influenced by VCs when purchasing.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0623108-151242 |
| Date | 23 June 2008 |
| Creators | Liu, Hao-wei |
| Contributors | Hueimei Liang, Fu-Yann Duh, Tsuang Kuo, Tai-Hwa Chow |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0623108-151242 |
| Rights | not_available, Copyright information available at source archive |
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