Customer Constancy in E-Commerce

E-commerce is growing rapidly since inception. The online transaction will be one of the major activities of credit card companies. Customer relationship management in the E-commerce area is one of the areas requiring deeper research. In the 80’s marketing approach started to focus on customers than products. The concept of relationship marketing became the major marketing approach. Relationship marketing put more attention on attracting, maintaining and enhancing customer relationship. This is a study of customer constancy that aims to investigate the factors that influence individuals to buy through the Internet or to avoid e-commerce and what roles these factors play in retaining these customers. For instance, the simple translation of a web site into a foreign language may be a disaster. Likewise, ignorance about color associations may be a problem. For example, while the color white represents purity in the United States, in Japan this color is associated with death. Additionally, beyond the interface factors it is necessary to investigate to what extent other factors influence people to buy, or not, through the Internet. For instance, availability is the main factor positively influencing Internet users in Singapore to buy through the Internet. Conversely, this same factor ranked as the least important for Internet users from Malaysia. It seems that the influencing factors to buy though the Internet differs within cultures.

On the other hand, for people who do not buy through the Internet, privacy, security and fear of using credit cards have been main factors negatively influencing individuals to buy through the Internet. It seems that individuals avoid Internet purchases influenced by the same sort of factors.