As managing customer relationship gets more important, companies are strengthening information service using multi-channel to their customers as a part of customer relationship management. Although the purpose is to elevate customer loyalty and profitability, empirical study on its relationship had been limited. In this study, we have validated the relationship between perceived information service quality by customers and their loyalty to the companies empirically.
First, we selected the target channels to analyze - Homepage, DM(Direct Mail), and Online Community. And, from the literatures on information quality and service quality, we developed the measurements of information service quality - information quality, convenience of information service, timeliness of information service. And applying the three measurements to the three channels, nine independent variables were created. Dependent variables were corporate image and customer loyalty. To analyze the hypotheses, we used 367 data obtained from a web survey.
The results of data analysis demonstrated that Homepage-timeliness, DM-quality, DM-convenience, Community-timeliness have affected to corporate image. And to the loyalty, Homepage-convenience, DM-quality, Community-timeliness have contributed significantly. The second results suggest that each channel has its own contribution and characteristic in terms of information service quality.
The implications of findings and future research directions are discussed.
