Types of loyal customers in electronic commerce: A latent profile analysis in a cross-market sample
(A2020-63506)

AUTHORS

Nathalie Peña García, CESA School of Business; Mauricio Losada-Otálora, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana; Augusto Rodríguez-Orejuela, Universidad del Valle; Irene Gil-Saura, Universidad de Valencia; María Fuentes-Blasco, Universidad Pablo de Olavide

KEYWORDS

unobserved-heterogeneity; cross-market; loyalty

ABSTRACT

Customer loyalty is the key to any business success. Traditionally, loyalty and its causal relationships have been studied from several perspectives, assuming there is a generalized and linear sequence of steps to get a customer become loyal. However, there are no studies that consider the levels of loyalty and its predeterminants according to consumers’ characteristics. This research aims to find the unobserved heterogeneity in consumers in a cross-market sample (Colombia-Spain) through a latent class analysis using mPlus 8.3, with loyalty as the key variable. Results show that there are four latent classes significantly different from each other due to not only country of origin, but demographic and web-graphic variables. Consumers in this research are classified into four segments: passionate-loyal customers, rational-loyal customers, indifferent-loyal customers, and non-loyal customers. Implications and limitations are discussed at the end of the document.