本科毕业论文---顾客忠诚度对淘宝服饰店的案例研究.doc

Consumer Loyalty ——A Case Study of
Apparel Stores on Taobao

Abstract: During recent years, China’s on-line shopping business has bloomed tremendously. Taobao, as the largest Chinese online auction company at present, shares twice as large market as eBay’s, which used to be dominant in the Chinese market. And the consumer to consumer (orC2C) apparel stores, which have taken up the largest part of all e-shops on Taobao, have attracted more and more customers every minute. The on-line shopping, which provides a new transaction method between the sellers and the customers. To manage this wholly new mode of transaction, it seems to be necessary for all the C2C e-store clothes sellers to understand the advantages and disadvantages of apparel stores operation on Taobao and discover the secret for successful operation. To keep and have customer’s loyalty is becoming the most important for those apparel stores on Taobao. Because of the differences between traditional commerce environment and the on-line commerce environment, it is more demanding and complex for the owners of apparel stores on Taobao to raise and retain customer loyalty. This article aims to introduce the features and the determinant factors of customer loyalty, and tries to suggest some effective countermeasures of successful customer loyalty management through a case study of a representative apparel store on Taobao.
Key words: E-commerce, Taobao, C2C, Consumer Loyalty, Consumer satisfaction

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顾客忠诚度——对淘宝服饰店的案例研究

摘 要： 伴随着国际网络的迅猛发展，近年来网上购物也蓬勃发展起来。淘宝是当前中国最大的网上购物中介公司，而服装店在所有淘宝店铺中占了最大的比重，并且每分钟都有越来越多的消费者在淘宝购买衣服。C2C网上购物给了消费者一种新的交易模式。为了更好的利用这种新兴的经营模式，从事服装的C2C卖家有必要清楚知道网上交易的优劣势以及明白成功的经营淘宝服装店的奥秘所在。因为传统购物环境和网上购物环境有着许多的不同之处，淘宝上的服饰经营者们也就更难提高和保持顾客的购物忠诚度。这篇文章目的就在于介绍顾客忠诚的特点及其决定因素并且通过对一家具有代表性的服饰店的案例分析对成功的顾客忠诚管理提出有效的方法及建议。
关键字：电子商务 淘宝 消费者对消费者电子商务 顾客忠诚度 客户满意度

CONTENTS

Abstract: I
摘 要 II
1. Introduction 1
2. Definition of Key Concepts 1
2.1 Definition of E-commerce and C2C E-commerce 1
2.2 Definition of Consumer Satisfaction 2
2.3 Definition of Consumer Loyalty 2
2.4 Distinction between Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty 3
3. Related Theory and Decisive Factors in Consumer Loyalty Evaluation 4
3.1 Social Network Theory 4
3.2 Consumers’ Behavioral Intention Theory 5
4. A Case Study of the Specific Apparel Store on Taobao 9
4.1 Brief Introduction to Taobao and its Status Quo 9
4.2 Brief introduction to the specific apparel store 10
4.3 Reasons for Choosing the Apparel Store and How it Succeeds 10
4.4 Secret to the Success of this Apparel Store through Analysis 12
5. Advantages and disadvantages of apparel store operation on Taobao 12
5.1 Advantages 12
5.2 Disadvantages 15
6. Measures for improvement of Consumer Loyalty of the apparel stores on Taobao 17
7. Conclusion 19
Reference 20
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 21

1. Introduction
With the rapid growth of international network, China’s C2C electronic market has been flourishing in recent years. Taobao shares twice as large market as eBay’s, which used to be dominant in the Chinese market. People can buy whatever they want on Taobao from article for daily use, clothes to luxury goods. In today's competitive marketplace, customer loyalty is serious business. And apparel stores, as the largest component of the whole Taobao and the main profit contributors, have to spare no effort to raise and maintain customer loyalty under the unique electronic commerce environment. In this article, the author first explains the definition of key concept of the paper, and then introduces related theory which will be used in the article and offer detailed information about the decisive factors in customer loyalty evaluation. To further analyze the importance of customer loyalty in the operation of apparel stores on Taobao, a case study of a specific and representative apparel store help to find out the secret to the success of the specific apparel store. Later, through the detailed analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of apparel store operation on Taobao, suggested measures for the improvement of consumer loyalty is provided for the apparel stores on Taobao.

2. Definition of Key Concepts
2.1 Definition of E-commerce and C2C E-commerce
Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or ecommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce
A large of variety of commerce is conducted on line including supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (or EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. And electronic commerce trade has been growing extraordinarily during these years with wide-spread Internet popularity. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well. Electronic commerce involves virtual items as well as physical items. And almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web. Online retailers are sometimes referred to as e-tailors and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail.

C2C is a three-letter abbreviation that can refer to Consumer-to-consumer electronic commerce; Consumer-to-consumer (or C2C) electronic commerce involves the electronically-facilitated transactions between consumers through some third party. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer-to-consumer_electronic_commerce
EBay is one of the common examples of the Consumer-to-Consumer ecommerce where Consumers complete their sales actively and regularly with another consumer, and they are all individual consumers.

2.2 Definition of Consumer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is a comparative concept referring to the matching degree of customer's expectation with the final gain. It is related to customer’s expectation and all costs customers pay. That is the difference between the benefits received from using a service and the monetary and nonmonetary cost of receiving the service. And it is known that a satisfied customer is six times more willing to continue to buy that product or service again and again than a dissatisfied customer. The higher the customer satisfaction is, the more likely a customer repeat the consumption behavior. Therefore, in an increasingly competitive world market, more and more companies try all means to upgrade customer satisfaction.

2.3 Definition of Consumer Loyalty
Customer loyalty is the concept of trust in a certain product brand or a company, and hope to maintain a repeat of psychological tendency, which is in fact a continuity of customer behavior, not vulnerable to the effect of outer environment and market. There are some measures used to judge the degree of customer loyalty: (1) Loyal customers often repeat their consumption behavior of one product or a brand, as a result of which consumption frequency can be learnt. (2) Loyal customers are willing to recommend your product or service to his relatives of close friends, who will be more willing than others to purchase your goods. (3) Loyal customers will reject your competitors’ products as long as the loyal tie between the loyal consumers and you are firm enough.

2.4 Distinction between Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty
There is a problem that it is likely that people easily confuse customer satisfaction and customer loyalty or regard these two terms to be the same or equally important. Customer satisfaction does not mean that customer loyalty since customer satisfaction is a kind of psychological attitude or feeling of satisfaction in consumption, but customer loyalty is a continuous transaction which will help to promote the occurrence of repeat customers. Data show that only the customer satisfaction is not enough. When a better product is supplied by some other else, a large number of customers may change suppliers. Thus satisfaction is supposed to be transformed into loyalty.

To further distinguish these two terms, one should understand that satisfaction is measured by customer expectations and feelings, and customer loyalty reflects the purchase of future actions and purchase commitments. Customer satisfaction is more concerned with the views and ideas of the past purchase experience while customer loyalty can predict the future intention to buy. What’s more, customer satisfaction does not have direct relation with actual future purchase behavior and do not promise satisfied customers’ insistent strong faith in your products. Since satisfaction is not absolute, you have to make great effort to transform satisfaction into loyalty to lock the customers. Thus we are able to conclude that customer satisfaction might be the basis of customer loyalty building.

However, customer satisfaction is not an essential condition for customer loyalty. Here is an example: many mobile phone users are not quite satisfied with the products, but if they you change the use of other products they have to pay the costs, in this way they will still adhere to the use of original cell phones. Costs would let them tolerate imperfect service providers, but if one day they can realize with little or no costs, I believe that they will act immediately (Liao, 1996:43).

To wrap up what has been mentioned above, loyalty must have access to a minimum level of customer satisfaction, which will favor the establishment of loyalty. However, customer satisfaction is not an important condition for customer loyalty!

3. Related Theory and Decisive Factors in Consumer Loyalty Evaluation
3.1 Social Network Theory
In this paper, we study online customers’ loyalty and behavior from social network and marketing perspectives. In the marketing literature, a customer’s prospect value of a product or service in a store could encourage him/her to shop at that store. In the social network, literature, a customer is not isolated from his/her social relations and his/her shopping choice could also be affected by social experiences (Cheng, Zhang, and Huang, 1991:25).

In the marketing literature, customer value has been considered a key predictor of customers’ choice, and it includes two distinct values: utilitarian and hedonic values (Babin & Darden & Griffin, 1994: 644-656). Utilitarian value means the rational value of a customer and depends on whether the specific need is realized, while hedonic value is used to refer to the emotional value and depends on whether the customer feels happy during the shopping process. It has been evident that both of these values are related to the monetary amount a customer spends on shopping.

In the social network literatures, the Chinese experience themselves as situated at the center of concentric network circles. The extent of intimacy with one another is reflected by the relative position of another within the concentric circles of one’s psychological field, as Figure 1 shows (Cheng, Zhang, and Huang, 1991:26).

Figure1: Chinese Hierarchical Circle
By studying the intensity of relationship among people, social network can be divided into three categories: information network, affect network, and trust network (Krackhardt, 1992: 216-239). The information network is a network in which people exchange information with each other. The affect network is a network in which people share their own personal feelings. The trust network is a network in which people show trust to each other.

These three networks have interactive relations. By chatting in a virtual community, online users are no longer strangers. Two persons will become more intimate if more information interactions occur between them. In this way, a solid information network could develop into an affect network. At the same time, after benefiting from information exchanges, some users would foster trust to each other. Therefore, an information network will encourage a trust network. What’s more, in China, strong ties, which usually exist in intimate relations such as family and close friends, help to develop more trust than weak ties. As a result, the affect network will facilitate a trust network.

3.2 Consumers’ Behavioral Intention Theory
The antecedent effects of service quality, customer satisfaction, and value on loyalty derive from Cronin, Brady, and Hult’s modeling of the effects of these three constructs on consumers’ behavioral intentions. That is to say, service quality, customer satisfaction, perceived value, justice, trust, and perceived risk are identified as possible determinants of customer loyalty. Current research further extends analysis relative to the antecedents of customer loyalty by assessing the effects of customers’ perceptions of justice and perceived risk in the service encounter (see Figure 2). And this figure shows how these determinants works together to customer satisfaction or customer trust and then achieve different degrees of customer loyalty (Cronin, Brady, and Hult’s, 2000: 193 - 218).

Figure 2: The Proposed Research Model
Service Quality: Service quality is a term that refers to the customer’s general impression of the relative inferiority/superiority of the organization and its services.

Perceived Value: Zeithaml’s study that suggests “perceived value is the customer’s overall assessment of the utility of a product based on perceptions of what is received and what is given.” (Zeithaml, 1988:14)And it is inferred from that customers have a “give-versus-get” mentality when it comes to perceptions of value.

Trust: The concept of trust is defined as a willingness to rely on an exchange partner in whom one has confidence. And trust exists when one party has confidence in an exchange partner’s reliability and integrity. A consumer must have confidence that the seller has his/her best interests at heart during the service