Horst Treiblmaier

WHAT KEEPS THE E-BANKING CUSTOMER LOYAL? A MULTIGROUP ANALYSIS OF THE MODERATING ROLE OF CONSUMER CHARACTERISTICS ON E-LOYALTY IN THE FINANCIAL SERVICE INDUSTRY

At first sight the Internet is the ideal medium for carrying out banking activities due to its cost savings potential and speed of information transmission. From a technological and cost-driven standpoint it may seem quite logical for banks to shift as many banking activities online as possible. At the same time, the question of how to foster customer loyalty arises when the relationship between the bank and the user becomes a virtual one. This paper investigates the importance of antecedents of online loyalty such as trust, quality of the Web site, quality of the service and overall satisfaction. Rather than investigating which factors drive customers to use online banking instead of offline banking, this paper addresses the problem of how to keep customers online and loyal to a specific supplier. A survey among more than 2,000 customers of an Austrian online bank was conducted and a structural equation modeling approach was used to gain important insights into how customer retention in the online banking business can be ensured. Satisfaction and trust were identified as important antecedents of loyalty. Additionally, the moderating role of consumer characteristics (gender, age, involvement, perceived risk and technophobia) was supported by the data.

Formative Constructs Implemented via Common Factors

Recently there has been a renewed interest in formative measurement and its role in properly specified models. Formative measurement models are difficult to identify, and hence to estimate and test. Existing solutions to the identification problem are shown to not adequately represent the formative constructs of interest. We propose a new two-step approach to operationalize a formatively measured construct that allows a closely matched common factor equivalent to be included in any structural equation model. We provide an artificial example and an original empirical study of privacy to illustrate our approach. Detailed proofs are given in an appendix.

Exploratory factor analysis revisited: How robust methods support the detection of hidden multivariate data structures in IS research

Exploratory factor analysis is commonly used in IS research to detect multivariate data structures. Frequently, the method is blindly applied without checking if the data fulfill the requirements of the method. We investigated the influence of sample size, data transformation, factor extraction method, rotation, and number of factors on the outcome. We compared classical exploratory factor analysis with a robust counterpart which is less influenced by data outliers and data heterogeneities. Our analyses revealed that robust exploratory factor analysis is more stable than the classical method.

Evaluating personalization and customization from an ethical point of view: an empirical study

This paper examines whether classic ethical theories can solve the ethical dilemmas associated with user-controlled customization and system-driven personalization of Web sites. Based on the notion that data sensitivity is not a universal concept but comes in different levels of intensity, we conducted an Internet-based survey among consumers to determine their level of data sensitivity and their attitudes towards personalization and customization. Our results have shown that users can be classified into different groups who differ significantly in terms of data sensitivity. Applying ethical theories to personalization and customization has led to conflicting conclusions, but they are in line with the findings from the survey, suggesting that customization is ethically less questionable than personalization.

The Google Online Marketing Challenge and Research Opportunities.

The Google Online Marketing Challenge is an ongoing collaboration between Google and academics, to give students experiential learning. The Challenge gives student teams US

The effect of e-commerce on the integration of IT structure and brand architecture

200 in AdWords, Googles flagship advertising product, to develop online marketing campaigns for actual businesses. The end result is an engaging in-class exercise that provides students and professors with an exciting and pedagogically rigorous competition. Results from surveys at the end of the Challenge reveal positive appraisals from the three—students, businesses, and professors—main constituents; general agreement between students and instructors regarding learning outcomes; and a few points of difference between students and instructors. In addition to describing the Challenge and its outcomes, this article reviews the postparticipation questionnaires and subsequent datasets. The questionnaires and results are publicly available, and this article invites educators to mine the datasets, share their results, and offer suggestions for future iterations of the Challenge.

E‐Adequate Branding: Building Offline and Online Brand Structure within a Polygon of Interdependent Forces

Abstract.  A companys information technology (IT) structure and its brand architecture are intended to minimize transaction costs both within the organization and between the organization and its customers. Business‐to‐Consumer (B2C) e‐commerce fundamentally alters the structure of those transaction costs relevant to the IT structure and the brand architecture. We conducted a survey among 102 chief information officers and chief marketing officers in 67 of the 100 most important B2C enterprises in Austria. The results show that companies typically implement a certain set of changes in the IT structure and the brand architecture if B2C e‐commerce is highly important to them and that these changes result in a stronger integration within and between the IT structure and the brand architecture. B2C e‐commerce projects thus require closely aligned conceptual, organizational and financial measures in both areas.

Online Fundraising for Environmental Nonprofit Organizations

Due to the new Web‐based forms of communication and customer interaction, the Internet directly impacts corporate branding strategies through the concept of e‐branding. Further, the Internet may al...

THE IMPACT OF BUSINESS TO CONSUMER E-COMMERCE ON ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE, BRAND ARCHITECTURE, IT STRUCTURE, AND THEIR INTERRELATIONS**

Although the Internet provides nonprofit organizations with unprecedented opportunities for fundraising, the volume of online donations has been miniscule. Since one reason for this may be peoples distrust in financial transactions on the World Wide Web, we conducted a survey to gain insights into user trust in and attitudes toward online payment systems. The results indicate that peoples trust in both the organization and the Internet are key factors in shaping their attitudes toward online payments, which in turn influences peoples likelihood of using the Internet for financial transactions such as online donations. Our findings suggest that nonprofits need to pay particular attention to donor relationships, process transparency, and transaction security in order to induce people to donate online.

Statistical and judgmental criteria for scale purification

Previous research on e-commerce has analyzed its influence on organizational structure, brand management, and IT structure separately. Drawing on transaction cost theory, we analyze the simultaneous impacts of business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce on organizational structure, brand architecture, and IT structure. We survey 49 chief marketing officers (CMOs) and 49 chief information officers (CIOs) of 64 out of the 100 most important consumer brand companies in Austria. We show that the amount of change in all three structural elements increases as the importance they attach to B2C e-commerce grows. Furthermore, the amount of change in both brand architecture and organizational structure and in brand architecture and IT structure are significantly linked to each other, even after we control for the importance of B2C e-commerce. We find mixed results for the hypothesis that higher levels of importance of B2C e-commerce enhance the dependence of the marketing-related IT structure on changes in brand architecture.