Customer Retention and Unplanned Purchases on the Web

Abstract

With the explosion of business to consumer commerce on the web, many companies are faced with new challenges in their efforts to retain customers and increase sales. Our study explores some of the important factors that increase customer intention to return and the number of unplanned purchases made. We find that both the level of perceived control and the shopping enjoyment experienced by new web customers can increase their intention to return. However, repeat customers do not seem to be influenced by either perceived control or shopping enjoyment in terms of their intention to return. We also find that an engaging web store design that utilizes value-added search mechanisms and presents a positively challenging experience can increase the customers' perceived control and enjoyment. Our results also indicate that product involvement is less important to new customers as opposed to repeat customers but the more often customers return to a web store the more their shopping enjoyment is determined by their product involvement. Finally, our study shows that neither perceived control nor shopping enjoyment have any significant impact on the number of unplanned purchases made by customers. Our results deepen our understanding of the consumer online shopping experience and provide guidelines for the more effective design and implementation of web-based stores.