THE IMPACT OF TRUST AND INTERACTIVITY ON
INTENSIFYING CUSTOMER LOYALTY FOR CRM
Alireza Faed, Afsaneh Ashouri and Chen Wu
Digital Ecosystem and Business Intelligence Institute, Curtin University of Technology, Enterprise Unit 4
De Laeter Way, Technology Park, Bentley, WA, 6102, Perth, Australia
Keywords: Customer relationship management, Loyalty. Trust, Interactivity, Brand credibility, Value proposition.
Abstract: Customer relationship management (CRM)is one of the most significant tools that a company can utilize in
order to better acquire customers, keep them for a long term and always provide them with premium values.
In addition, CRM is beneficial for labour saving purposes through efficiencies especially when
consolidating with some Internet-enabled applications. Companies employ CRM in an attempt to increase
their profitability and simultaneously enhance their customer interactions and loyalty. Nevertheless, in order
to avoid a negative response to the relationship with the customers, companies must incorporate two
important aspects of CRM to enhance customer loyalty and improve the effective usage level of CRM are
trust and interactivity. In order for CRM to be productive and responsive it is important that issues such as
trust and interactivity are appropriately analysed and addressed. Companies must increase their efforts to
support a customer’s loyalty by creating and promoting various values including interactivity and so on. In
this paper, we propose a conceptual framework to support Internet-CRM in order to optimize CRM system
and strategies by increasing the levels of value proposition, brand credibility, interactivity and trust. We also
provide a case study based on this proposed conceptual framework.
1 INTRODUCTION
CRM is an art of acquiring customers to have a long
lasting relationship with them. Companies must take
the initiative to actualize and implement CRM.
CRM is a mixture of people, processes, and
technology in order to understand and obtain
customers for the company. CRM focuses on
customer retention and build up the relationship. To
get the advantage from implementation of CRM,
companies must have an efficient CRM programs to
get the loyalty of the customers (Chen and Popovich,
2003). In order to compete with the competitors and
move alongside of the competition in today’s
market, business need to have more than just a
Website with professional expression; they need to
absorb and involves users, thereby having a
encyclopedic system and strategies to support their
businesses (Chen and Sockel, 2004). .CRM
applications are able to provide a proper connection
from front office to back office and touch points
with the customers. An organization’s touch points
are the Internet, E-mail, call centres, face to face
marketing, fax, pagers and kiosks. CRM can be
employed to consolidating these touch points to the
benefit of the organization. While doing so, the
company will work much appropriately in a
invulnerable ecosystem(Chen and Popovich, 2003).
Using CRM companies would be capable of idealize
their interactions with customers and finding a 360
degree vision of customers (Chen and Popovich,
2003). Ultimately, CRM implies one-to-one or face
to face marketing in the literature(Chen and
Popovich, 2003). The whole study will be
accomplished under the context of CRM, so, it is
mandatory to know some important definitions and
improvements in this area. Therefore, in this paper,
we propose a conceptual framework to improve
CRM system and strategies. The paper is organized
as follows. Section 2 discusses the impact of the
Internet on CRM, which is the main research subject
of this paper. Section 3 will introduce the history of
loyalty and loyalty problem as well as providing
some important definition regarding that. Section 4,
defines the impacts of CRM on customer loyalty
programs. Section 5 describes our conceptual
framework to increase loyalty, using components
like interactivity, trust and value proposition and
113
Faed A., Ashouri A. and Wu C..
THE IMPACT OF TRUST AND INTERACTIVITY ON INTENSIFYING CUSTOMER LOYALTY FOR CRM.
DOI: 10.5220/0003048501130120
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing (KMIS-2010), pages 113-120
ISBN: 978-989-8425-30-0
Copyright
c
2010 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
their relationship to enhance the loyalty. In section
6, we introduce our case study to validate our
conceptual framework. Eventually, section 7, deals
with research approach within which we can solve
the problem.
2 IMPACT OF THE INTERNET
ON CRM
CRM has been transformed during past couple of
years from a customer service business unit
approximately related to marketing to an electronic
generator attempting to maximize the value of
existing customer relationships (Clemons, 2006).
CRM technology has been changed by the
advent of the Internet. Various kinds of online
transactions and ordering have made companies to
strengthen their CRM strategies in a way to fulfil
their clients. In addition companies need to create
lasting bond with e-customers by proposing new
approaches in a virtual environment. Moreover, the
Internet has got a different E-loyalty program which
should be cost-effective for the customers (Chen and
Popovich, 2003). This paper aims at creating
advantageousness, advisability, lifetime value,
retention and satisfaction using Internet-CRM
(Rygielski et al.), (Chen and Popovich, 2003). I-
CRM can generate new opportunities for the buyers
and the sellers to have a comfy relationship, find
distribution channels and better clarify business
strategies (Chen and Popovich, 2003). Organizations
can take benefit from the Internet to acquire and
keep clients all around the world and create
usefulness and productivity (Lawson-Body and
Limayem, 2004). The Internet can reveal a safe and
virtual environment in which company can interact
and exchange priceless ideas, face to face
communication or computer mediated
communication with their current or potential
customers (Lawson-Body and Limayem, 2004).
More customer-oriented approach to the
organization, such as online ordering and
purchasing, has already adjusted the level for an
altering paradigm in customer service. A recent
report describes how successful Web sites are in
building continuous relationships with e-clients by
offering services in traditionally impossible ways
(Chen and Popovich, 2003). Internet-CRM which is
regarded as E-CRM by some researchers, refers to
the marketing activities, tools and techniques,
delivered over the Internet with a particular goal to
locate, build and enhance long-term customer
relationships to intensify their individual potential
(Lee-Kelley et al., 2003). We believe I-CRM
evolves around the notions of brand credibility,
interactivity, trust and loyalty. All these elements are
specifically proposed to deal with the Internet based
CRM.
3 THE ADVENT OF LOYALTY
The notion of enhancing the relationship of a
company with its clients goes back to many years
ago and has been examined those days in
distribution marketing stage. Now, it is reflected as a
bond builder. Nowadays, some organizations regard
loyalty as a defensive marketing method and
strategy (Sharp and Sharp, 1997). Defensive
marketing strategies concentrate on empowering
relationships of the company with its clients for a
long term and probably create new connections and
businesses with potential clients (Bridges and
Freytag, 2009). However, it focuses on the current
and potential customers and it is believed that it
should happen in the early time of the sale (Sharp
and Sharp, 1997).
3.1 Customer Loyalty
Today, the concept of customer loyalty is all-
inclusive and it is an important research topic for the
researchers and companies that need to be studies
more in order to reach to the highest effectiveness.
Loyalty is considered as an invaluable resource and
credit in cutting edge markets of today. Moreover,
customer loyalty is recognized as the probability of
purchase, probability of product repurchase,
purchase frequency, repeat purchase behavior and
buying order (Kumar and Shah, 2004), (Anderson,
2003). At the centre of loyalty programs is the
principle of bolstering whereby it is supposed that
behaviors , which are rewarded will be repeated
(Bridson et al., 2008). Loyalty is defined in terms of
repeat buying behavior (Gommans. M . 2001). It
costs a company more to attract and absorb a new
customer as it does to implement a retention
strategy. Reichheld and Sasser (2000) distinguished
that client acquisition cost is 20 to 40 percent more
than finding a new client in the physical
marketplace, as mentioned in the study of the
Internet clothing market. This conveyed to higher
losses in the very first stages of the relationship, but
after 24
th
to 30
th
month, the Internet clients probably
need to spend twice as much as they used to do in
the first six months (Lee-Kelley et al., 2003). A
KMIS 2010 - International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
114
gratified customer have a tendency of being more
loyal to a brand or store over time than a customer
whose buying is occurred by other causes such as
time limitations and information about loss making
(Gommans. M . 2001). The main goal of this loyalty
and E-loyalty is to increase customers support and
their level of faithfulness to the brands and the
company and make the customers repeat their
purchasing rates. (Cortiñas et al., 2008), (Anderson,
2003). Using infinite and broad loyalty or E-loyalty
program, the company will be eligible of measuring,
enhancing, controlling and managing customer
profitability (Reinartz. W, 2005). The main aim of
customer loyalty programs is to increase customers’
loyalty to the firm, by attempting to increase repeat
purchase rates or total purchases (Cortiñas et al.,
2008). The benefits of customer loyalty to a provider
of either services or products include: Lower
customer price sensitivity, reduced expenditure on
attracting new customers; and improved
organizational profitability (J., 2005). Loyalty has
been measured by the probability of product
repurchase (Anderson, 2003). Brand loyalty Is the
preferential, attitudinal and behavioral answer
toward one or more brands in a product group
expressed over a period of time by series of
customers (Anderson, 2003).
3.2 E-Loyalty
First, we would like to have a clear definition of e-
loyalty, which is going to be created in a better way,
using our conceptual framework. Utilizing
conceptual framework, companies can take benefit
from loyalty as well as E-loyalty. An exclusive
factor in E-loyalty is the impressive and eminent
role of the first impression generated by a website as
well as its ease of use easy exploration, loading the
web pages smoothly with high speed, dependability
and accuracy of the server, quick shopping and
checkout procedures, and a personalized
communication that the company wants to prepare
(Gommans. M . 2001).
4 THE IMPACT OF CRM ON
CUSTOMER LOYALTY
Using the Internet to endorse CRM admits firms to
improve their customer loyalty followed by
customer satisfaction in the IT sector. CRM has
Seven significant factors which are customer
exploring association with customers, recognizing
customer anticipation, verification, companionship,
interactive management, and personalization
(Lawson-Body and Limayem, 2004). It is proved
that the scope of CRM in terms of partnership,
relationship with the clients and personalization
have a direct effect on customer loyalty (Lawson-
Body and Limayem, 2004). Moreover, the level of
CRM existence on the Internet has a positive impact
on loyalty as follows:
1-It is beneficial with a low cost to serve a loyal
customer. 2-Price-sensitivity is one of the loyal
customer’s characteristics. 3-Loyal customers long
to be with the company all the time. 4-Word of
mouth will be conveyed and admitted by loyal
customers and they always tend to give concrete and
certain advocacies about their popular product or
service (Kumar and Shah, 2004). 5-Loyal customers
tend to go for more pay outs, more purchases.
Moreover, they are more accessible and consider as
happy customers, and appear as useful agent for the
organizations (Harris and Goode, 2004).
5 A CONCEPTUAL
FRAMEWORK
Based on the literature, we propose the following
model of E-loyalty with the underlying drivers
consisting of, Value Propositions, Brand Building,
Trust and Security, and, Customer and Loyalty.
Figure 1: The conceptual framework.
5.1 Interactivity
The interactivity illustrates a high level of validity
and reliability (Liu, 2003). Despite the potential for
interactivity, little attention has been paid to how
interactivity might be more fully utilized (Cyr et al.,
2009). (Cyr et al., 2009) Defined interactivity as the
capability of a computer- enabled communication
system that permits exchange of roles between the
sender and receiver in real or delayed time so that
Brand credibility
Loyalty
Value proposition
Interactivity
Information
collection
Connectedness
Choice
CRM Contex
t
Trust
THE IMPACT OF TRUST AND INTERACTIVITY ON INTENSIFYING CUSTOMER LOYALTY FOR CRM
115
communicators have more control over the structure,
pace, and content of the communication. Although
interactivity has numerous dimensions, a common
theme is that the website successfully provides
information to the user, is perceived as responsive,
and allows a sense of connection often with other
users. Interactivity alone on the Internet intensifies
the relationship between personalization and
customer loyalty (Lawson-Body and Limayem,
2004). In addition, it is regarded, as an important
online marketing approach (Cyr et al., 2009).
Interactivity is one of the items that can have an
impact on loyalty. Based on some studies, there has
been a lack of interactivity as a major problem in
companies and no research has been done on
interactivity and its relationship with loyalty and
little interactivity is understood. Also, unclear results
have been generated. Also, five important
interactivity dimensions defined to satisfy
communication needs: playfulness, choice,
connectedness, information collection, and
reciprocal communication (Cyr et al., 2009).
Ultimately, this lack of interactivity can simply
hinder the productive utilization of the Internet as a
marketing communication channel (Srinivasan et al.,
2002, Liu, 2003, Anderson, 2003), and (Faed, 2010).
Interactivity has a positive relationship with trust
and value proposition.
5.1.1 Choice
According to our conceptual framework is one of
subsets of interactivity. It create motivation for the
customers and some companies provide this, as a
promotion or reward to their customers (Patall et al.,
2008). Moreover, in another study by Dianne Cyr
(2008), choice considered as an elements of
interactivity (Cyr et al., 2009).
5.1.2 Connectedness
Connectedness is one of the newest marketing
strategies and shows the closeness and friendship of
a brand with customers. In addition, having
connectedness, companies have the ability to think
about different target audiences. Various ways of
creating response to the customers is called
connectedness. It can simply provide control over
the customer and a good relationship (Cyr et al.,
2009).
5.1.3 Information Collection
Information collection is another component of
interactivity, which has a direct and positive effect
on the whole procedure. While collecting
information, we can customize it clearly in order for
better communicate with our clients. What is more,
due to interactive nature of the Internet, all
information should be updated on daily bases (Fortin
and Dholakia, 2005). (Yoo et al.)
5.2 Trust
Trust plays a central role in augmenting both
behavioral and attitudinal loyalty and a critical role
in generating customer loyalty. which in turn
influences marketing outcome related factors like
market share maintenance and price elasticity
(Gommans. M . 2001). Trust is also outlined as the
confidence in the exchange partner’s authenticity
and integrity (Anderson, 2003). Moreover, trust is
defined as “the perceived credibility and generosity
of a goal. One of the primary reasons for the
significance of trust or confidence in an online
business is the perceived level of risk accompanied
with online buying (Anderson, 2003). In addition,
trust can create strong relationship with the clients
and some researchers defined it as a willingness to
rely on an exchange partners in whom one has
confidence. Moreover trust can be described as
existing when one party has confidence in the
exchange partner’s reliability and integrity
(Sirdeshmukh et al., 2002). Trusting beliefs can be
described as consumers’ perceptions of particular
attributes of vendors, including the ability, integrity
and benevolence of the vendors, when handling the
consumers’ transactions (Lin and Lin, 2006). Based
on conceptual framework, trust has a strong positive
and mutual relationship with loyalty and they can
intensify each other throughout the process.
5.3 Value Propositions
Value proposition is an ancillary service that other
competitors can dedicate this service to the
customers better than one company. Product
customization and interactivity are two exceptional
value propositions that assign to E-loyalty in online
buyer attitude (Gommans. M . 2001). It expresses
the relationship among the performance of the
product, the satisfaction of the customer’s
requirements, and the total cost to the customer over
the customer relationship life cycle (Payne, 2005).
5.4 Brand Credibility
Brands can affect various stages of consumer choice
processes, and hence, various components of
KMIS 2010 - International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
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consumer utility functions (Erdem et al., 2002).
Brands potentially play many roles in affecting
consumer choice attitude. A significant factor that
underlies many of these roles is consumer
uncertainty about product attributes and/or benefits
(Erdem et al., 2002). Brand credibility or the
credibility of a brand as a signal is known as the
believability of the product position information
contained in a brand, which entails consistently
delivering what is promised (Erdem et al., 2002).
Firms can use various individual marketing mix
elements to signal product quality, such as charging
higher prices, offering extended warranties or
distributing via high-end channels. The role that the
brand can play in customer retention, as well as in
promoting certain behaviors by customers that lead
to long-term benefits for the firm. Brands embody
the long-term experience that a customer has with a
service provider; in effect, the brand is a ‘‘summary
statistic’’ characterizing the cumulative temporal
relationship between two parties, the customer and
the service provider. In this perspective, the brand
comes to embody the credibility of the firm, which
can only be built and solidified over time through
repeated customer/firm interactions, but can quickly
be lost if trust is violated by the firm; this makes
brand credibility a firm-wide responsibility that must
concern all functions at all times. Building the
credibility of a brand is recognized by consumers to
be a long-term and continuing investment by the
firm; hence, they behave towards the firm as if it
were posting a bond that is forfeited when its
promises are not kept (Sweeney and Swait, 2008).
Brand is an important relational tool in the firm’s
customer relationship management and is an
efficient market signal that the company employ to
address market information asymmetries (Sweeney
and Swait, 2008). Brand loyalty is an intricate
commitment to re-purchase or support a preferred
product or service steadily in the future, as a
consequence creating continual identical brand or
equivalent brand buying, in spite of positional
impacts and marketing endeavors having the
potential to make changing attitude (Lin and Lin,
2006). Brand credibility encompasses two
significant elements: trustworthiness and expertise
and price sensitivity (Sweeney and Swait, 2008),
(Payne, 2005).
6 CASE STUDY
In this section, we discuss a business case based on
the conceptual framework. We proposed that the
approach be assessed by means of case study in
which a transformation of CRM occurs in order to
adapt to the mobile business world. Company
ACME Ltd. is a mobile vendor in the Asia-pacific
market. The aim of the case study is to increase the
level of customer loyalty and promote ACME's
CRM system and CRM strategies. While ACME
offers varieties of mobile phones with different
features, it is situated in the mobile-commerce
industry that requires some application in the context
of customer relationship management to increase the
perceived loyalty of the customers. Due to the lack
of customers' trust and the deficiency of perceived
interactivity, the company needs a CRM-
consolidated system and strategies to monitor
various marketing activities. The company has an
enormous production; it should act in way, to boost
all aspect of the process to have a desirable output.
This system will help the company and customer
mutually.
6.1.1 ACME Company
The ACME, Ltd, a mobile phone company serving
the Asia-Pacific area market. Acme Mobile was
established in Singapore in 2002, fundamentally
distributing mobile games to retailers and sellers in
the region. Today, with offices in Bangkok, Manila,
and Singapore, Acme Mobile distributes almost any
kind of mobile entertainment subject. It has a big
amount of investment on mobile industry and has
various partners in this area such as Samsung, LG
and Nokia. Moreover, they take benefit from
different electronic commerce markets such as B2B
and B2C. In addition, they have a salient
customization service in which people can give
order to the company. According to the model,
customers have different choices which are different
types of mobile phones with variety of options.
Also, customers are able to order different plans for
broadband. Since ACME is a mobile phone and
Internet provider, it aims at initiating with
interactivity toward customers. Interactivity in our
model has three levels. First, we consider choice of
the customers as an important aspect. Customers
have different choices, for example, they can choose
various plans (e.g. 30 dollar cap, pre-paid, etc.) if
they intend to buy a mobile phone. Moreover, for
their availability and usefulness, customers need to
be prepared with different promotions. Second issue
is the connectedness, which will be accessible via
SMS, e-mail, fax; telephone and mobile services.
This way, ACME can easily update customers with
THE IMPACT OF TRUST AND INTERACTIVITY ON INTENSIFYING CUSTOMER LOYALTY FOR CRM
117
various news and/or problems raised. The last issue
is related to information collection.
6.1.2 Information Collection
The company has a variety of sources to accumulate
raw data about the customers and the sort of data
could be private or public and turn them all into
valid and credible information. In terms of having a
choice, connectedness and information collection,
both customers and ACME can take a real benefit of
each other and have a better perceived interactivity.
Moreover, the ACME alone can acquire proper
brand credibility in order to increase the sale and
promote the trust of the clients. In this paper, we
tend to set a motion in this process and build up the
loyalty and help company to come up with such a
CRM system to reinforce the validity, reputation of
the company and make the people repeat their
purchase. As a result, interactivity and trust increase
the probability that customers will find something
that they wish to buy with a good loyalty.
6.2 Brand Credibility
The company cannot sell efficiently LG products
and the brand alone has a low credibility. Great
brand is a brand that clients trust and believe in.
When consumers cannot trust a brand they do not
buy it. One of the important reasons why people go
for a brand repeatedly is the credibility the brand has
among the consumers. Moreover, brand credibility is
defined as the believability of the product
information contained in a brand, which requires
that consumers perceive that the brand have the
ability and willingness to bear without interruption
what has been guaranteed. As an example, brand
credibility can bring about price sensitivity, as it
occurred to the clients in this company. The data-set
will be examined by confirmatory factor analysis.
6.3 Interactivity
SMS, E-mail, face to face, fax, IM, different
selections, varieties of data. We will use t-Test,
ANOVA to ascertain the relationship between each
sub-component with interactivity. To have a
concrete interactivity, the company should have
three factors which are choice, connectedness,
information collection (Chen and Sockel, 2004, Lee,
2005). Moreover, interactivity alone should have
other criteria such as user control and responsiveness
which we overlook them in this study(Cyr et al.,
2009, Lee, 2005). In addition, the feedback from
well-interactivity would be efficiency, effectiveness,
enjoyment and trust within which companies can
receive lots of clients (Cyr et al., 2009). Lack of
interactivity is a problem for a majority of web-sites
as the companies cannot map their customers
out(Srinivasan et al., 2002), (Srinivasan et al., 2002).
In this study, we concentrate on three significant
aspect of interactivity which will be discussed
below:
6.3.1 Choice
Most of the times clients have a variety of choices
regarding product or service but in some cases in can
be limited to specified ones like changes in
company’s discounts in one brand.
6.3.2 Connectedness
According to the previous studies companies should
find proper ways for connecting with the clients and
increase their level of interactivities with each other.
Using SMS, email, IM, fax in the first level and
advertising, word of mouth, branding and producing
customer experience in the second phase can enrich
this interactivity and are interconnected and provide
a good amount of interactivity within company.
6.3.3 Information Collection
The Company needs a good information collection
while it needs to have a decision-making. So, it has
to be clear, actual and concise. Moreover, the source
of the data should be credible enough. Interview and
questionnaire, needs assessment and both need
comprehensive information.
6.4 Value Proposition
B2C, B2B distribution, new delivery channels, free
calls, different services, giving discount and sending
precious gifts to the potential customers. For
analyzing value proposition, To begin with, we
should go toward ample definition. This is followed
by an open-ended questionnaire with at least 100
customers. As discussed before, value proposition is
kind of service or product that a competitor can
provide better.
6.5 Loyalty
Most of the times, the users come back to re-
purchase their popular products after ACME
conducted a promotion in the recently-held
conference. In addition, trustworthiness practices
KMIS 2010 - International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
118
behalf of the company are conceptualized and
personalized differently for different clients and the
clients can experience new featured services. In
addition, as discussed previously, loyalty is proving
that we always patronize a particular company.
6.6 Trust
Customers trust the company due to their vast
amount of services but sometimes because of the
risk involved in a product or service customers
cannot go any further, so they shift to another seller.
Company must respect commitments; Control its
language in its communications and in which it
needs to convey its messages to the clients and
above all the company should let the customers talk.
Not only can our criteria turn into interactivity but
they can change into trust, as well (Lee, 2005).
7 RESEARCH APPROACH
A qualitative study among customers provides
further insights into the benefits of customers when
participating in loyalty programs. To discover
whether the value-proposition may result in a better
customer experience, a company should address a
value assessment to measure the relative
significance that clients locate on the different
aspects of a product. Logical tools like conjoint
analysis may be utilized to recognize clients that
supervise generally known preferences regarding
product aspects. Such tools may also clarify
substantial market parts with service requirements
that are not absolutely provided to by the aspects of
current implications (Payne, 2005). We will develop
a questionnaire and survey as the major data
collection method. The questions in this
questionnaire, comprises of 100 questions and will
follow the scales, developed in prior studies. In
general, our aim is to a self-administered
questionnaire survey of complains and customer
feedback from our mobile commerce industry
partners. Moreover, we need to apply 7 Likert-Type
scales for measuring personal values. According to
our Likert-scale, 1: not very important, and for 7:
very important. Other scales for measuring store
attributes and other notions were anchored for 1:
strongly disagree, and for 7: strongly agree. The
questions involves in the questionnaire should be
confirmed in a pilot test. A pilot study is to be
conducted among students and for that reason, it
may need some revisions in the structure of the
questionnaire might be created. According to the
outcomes of the pilot study, all components in our
conceptual framework will be clarified and chosen
(Luck and Lancaster, 2003). Moreover,
Confirmatory factor analysis will be conducted to
evaluate the measurement for our conceptual
framework, basically for trust, level of interactivity
and perceived loyalty within the company. Then, the
demographic elements and the advanced key plans
of the samples of customers and non-customers of
company will be compared, with chi-squared for
explicit data followed by Student t-tests for the
continuous data. After that, SPSS 17 will be adopted
for discovering descriptive statistics and factor
structures, and structural equation model will be also
considered for confirmatory factor analyses to
clarify the credibility of the scales. In the next stage,
all kinds of feedback about CRM and perceived
loyalty will be gathered and will be utilized as the
main population for our study. In the next phase, we
will take an accidental sample of the population. For
having a satisfactory assessment we will use a five-
point Likert-type scale was applied ranging from 1 =
completely satisfied to 5 = dissatisfied. Process of
loyalty program in our study then, will be measured
by some items, one item for each of the components
of the process. The clients will be asked to express
their degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction on the
same five-point Likert-type scale from “totally
satisfied” to “dissatisfied”. About interactivity, it
could be measured by some variables like, Face to
face, Telephone, fax, E-Mail in order to calculate the
level of interaction, communication and number of
contacts that the company have with the customers
whether new or potential. Several measures of
interactivity have been utilized in experimental
researches (Liu, 2003).
8 CONCLUSIONS
The Internet is dragging us closer to the electronic
marketing’s concept of a complete market, many
goods and services will be sharply perceived
valuable by the assistance of the Internet. This work
is being carried out to propose our conceptual
framework for the success of CRM. This framework
consists of key elements including value proposition,
trust, interactivity, brand credibility as antecedents
of loyalty under the context of CRM. We provided a
detailed case study to qualitatively demonstrate the
effectiveness of our conceptual framework. Future
work needs to be carried out to quantitatively
validate the conceptual framework.
THE IMPACT OF TRUST AND INTERACTIVITY ON INTENSIFYING CUSTOMER LOYALTY FOR CRM
119
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The researchers would like to appreciate Prof
Elizabeth Chang for her immense advice and support
throughout this study. Further more, the researchers
hope to have a little contribution to this field.
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