Abstract:
Large numbers of individuals are adopting online auction websites as an online product distribution channel. The increasing number of users in online auctions and the productoriented website design are particularly attractive to customers making one-off purchases. Attracting customers may help an online seller become successful in the short-term, but it does not necessarily improve the business success potential in the long-term. Customer retention is suggested to be the key factor helping businesses achieve long-term success in any business environment. This thesis uses repurchase intention and actual behaviour to understand customer retention. Specifically, we study service provision around purchase as a strategy to motivate customers’ repurchase intention and actual behaviours from the same online seller. The main research question we address is how can online sellers customise service provision around the purchase process to achieve better customer retention? This research was conducted in New Zealand and Taiwan to understand the impact of online auctions on customer repurchase intention and actual behaviours using multi-method research. Survey data was collected to provide an initial understanding of the relationship between service provision around purchase and repurchase intentions of 295 respondents from New Zealand and 305 respondents from Taiwan. Interviews were conducted to expand the understanding surrounding the association between repurchase intention and repurchase behaviour, with 20 interviews in New Zealand and 24 interviews in Taiwan. The findings suggested that most customers’ repurchase behaviours in online auctions were a result of want and need evaluation. Although the evaluation of wants and needs for a product included the service provision around purchases, business value and customer loyalty, the evaluation criteria for each factor were different. An intention to repurchase from the same online seller, as result of a want evaluation may directly motivate a repurchase behaviour or indirectly influence repurchase behaviours through the need evaluation. This study proposes an Online Auction Repurchase Behaviour model to provide an overview of the relationship between service provision and repurchase behaviour, empirical understanding of the evaluation process of repurchase behaviours, and guidelines for online sellers for effective service design to retain customers. This model was derived from repurchase intention models (quantitative research findings) and repurchase behaviour models (qualitative research findings).