Relationships between Customer Socialization, Customer Participation, and Loyalty of On-line Service Providers

Purpose – This study aims to propose and validate a research model that describes the relationships between customer socialization, customer participation, and customer loyalty in the online service industry. Although customer loyalty is frequently discussed topic in marketing and strategy research, this study takes a novel approach in adopting customer socialization and participation as the antecedents to customer loyalty. Research design, data, and methodology – Based on adopting and modifying measurement items of the constructs from previous studies, this study develops survey regarding the constructs within the proposed research model. Among current registered members of Facebook and DaumKakao, 522 college students and other regular users are selected as the samples for conducting the survey. The collected data is analyzed by structural equation modeling method using SPSS and AMOS. Results – Proposed hypotheses of the positive relationships between customer socialization and customer participation, and between customer participation and customer loyalty are all supported. Conclusions – The results of this study suggest customer participation as an important precursor to customer loyalty in the online service industry. Also, customer socialization is validated as a new strategy to increase customer participation. These results validate the practical importance of communicating mission, purpose, value, and other customer socialization activities that firms undertake.