A study on moderating role of switching gains in relationship between customer satisfaction & trust and customer loyalty for internet shopping malls

Customer retention is more emphasized for internet business than off-line shopping malls. The loyals not only purchase a lot but also recommend the mall to new customers quickly using internet media, and there have been many studies on this subject. In this study, customer satisfaction and trust are suggested as preceding variables that have an influence on customer loyalty, and switching gains are suggested as a moderating variable between customer satisfaction & trust and customer loyalty. Many people think it would be easier to change business connection and customer loyalty for internet shopping-malls would be very low. This study, however, concluded that customer satisfaction and trust had a significant influence on customer loyalty even in internet shopping-mall, and that switching gains had moderating effect between satisfaction–attitudinal loyalty and trust–behavioral loyalty. These results are meaningful in that customer satisfaction or trust should be emphasized even on internet business and that switching gains can be strategic focus in building up customer loyalty and retention.