MANAGING ONLINE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND LOYALTY THROUGH ELECTRONIC CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT IN DIGITAL B2C MARKETS; A STUDY OF TURKISH FASHION COMPANIES

Abstract

Companies of the Turkish fashion industry fall in the category of businesses that are currently trending in the digital market and facing challenges of customer satisfaction. These challenges are partly because these companies focus on attracting customers and put very little effort in retaining the customers after their first purchase. Considering that the immediate objective of eCRM being customer satisfaction has witnessed alarming failures in the past years, every marketer these days is focused on better understanding the relationship between these two concepts in the digital business-to-customer market of the Turkish Fashion Industry. With the high level competition in the digital market, customer satisfaction and loyalty are the main objectives that companies seek to achieve. E-commerce in Turkey has witnessed rapid growth in recent years and fashion accounts for 41.9% of Turkey’s e-commerce revenue. This study scrutinized the relationship between eCRM and online customer satisfaction and loyalty in this sector, and provide insights into how eCRM implementation can influence customer satisfaction and loyalty. Quantitative research methods were applied; primary data was collected through self-administered questionnaires and analysed with the help of IBM SPSS 20 and SPSS AMOS 20. The constructs of the research model were evaluated through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis. The findings of this research indicated that the operationalized eCRM features have some significant direct and indirect relationships with online customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and attested to the mediating effect of customer satisfaction on the relationship between eCRM implementation and customer loyalty.