Stickiness: Implications for Web-Based Customer Loyalty Efforts

Abstract

The past few years have borne witness to a revolution in business with acceleration in the use of the World Wide Web to support or, in many cases, supplant traditional modes of marketing and selling products and services. The Internet consumer base is continually growing. According to a report conducted by Computer Industry Almanac, Inc. (www.c-i-a.com, 1999), 490 million people around the world will have online access by the year 2002. With the rapid increase in the number of online consumers, the managers and marketers are moving to exploit this opportunity to reach millions of customers worldwide. Between 1997-1999, Internet hosts grew from 16 million to over 72 million worldwide (www.isc.org, 2000). The explosive growth of websites raises the question to the Web designer and marketer about how to attract consumer attention to their sites and how to differentiate their sites from other sites.