Relationship marketing in electronic commerce environments

The advent of electronic commerce is changing marketing practice. In particular the transformation of traditional intermediaries such as the retailer is occurring as a result of new computer-mediated relationships. This paper uses the setting of an interactive home-shopping supermarket to examine the changing role of the retailer in electronic commerce environments (ECEs). We build on our previous conceptual enquiry which proposed a conceptual model which posits that retailers in an ECE apply a trust-based approach to consumer marketing relationships. In this paper we provide additional literature and empirical evidence to support our proposition that the relationship between the retailer and their customers can be defined by the disconfirmation of two cognitive images of the on-line shopping experience, these being the expected virtual (service brand-created, cognitive image of experience) and actual real (service-processcreated, cognitive image of experience) images. This paper develops existing conceptualizations through new, confirmatory, interorganizational case data and consumer-oriented, qualitative, empirical evidence from focus groups that supports our proposition.

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