The importance of relationship between customer and retailer has become prevalent in the ever-increasing competitive online market. The customers buying process often begin with the downloading of the required Apps in relation to the products they intended to purchase. Hence, customer satisfaction depends on customers' post-purchase evaluation on their experience with the use of the Apps. The aim of this chapter is to conceptualize the apps usage for online shopping, by examining the role of trust and satisfaction gained from the market interaction between the customers and retailers. Customers rely heavily on the information as well as the experiences encountered from the use of the apps. The retailers need to gain insights from the customer's perspective on the apps usage in order to improve customer relationship. This has impact on retailers' marketing efforts for winning the customers' loyalty.
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Due to increasing competition, retailers need to attract more satisfied customers and transform them to be loyal to products and brands (Ye, Zhang, & Zan, 2009). The investments in both technology and human capital which include the development and management of the online apps are part of the operating cost of the online commerce. These costs are often huge financial commitment to many firms and are directly link to maintaining and improving customer satisfaction (Arnold, Reynolds, Ponder, & Lueg, 2005). Customer satisfaction undoubtedly remains as the main performance indicator to measure the customers’ purchase intention. However, it is often noticed that even satisfied customers have the tendency to switch brands and retailers, especially within online shopping platform (Jones & Reynolds, 2006; Rezaei, Ali, Amin, & Jayashree, 2016; Rezaei, Amin, Moghaddam, & Mohamed, 2016; Rezaei, Shahijan, Amin, & Ismail, 2016; Yeo, Goh, & Rezaei, 2017). In their efforts in extending the European Customer Satisfaction Index (ECSI) model, Dwayne, et al., (2004) found that customer satisfaction, trust and communication are precursors to customer loyalty. Furthermore, customer satisfaction is affected greatly by the following factors: reliability, navigation, information responsiveness, site design, customer support, ease of use and security (Finn, Wang, & Frank, 2009). These factors apply to apps and the web, as apps inherit the similar characteristic from the user interface of the web.
Enormous efforts are devoted to researching and increasing the customer satisfaction in both online and offline businesses. Dwayne, et al., (2004) argue that customer satisfaction is crucial in leading to customer retention and loyalty. Previous studies (Alavi, Rezaei, Valaei, & Wan Ismail, 2016; Rezaei & Amin, 2013; Rezaei, Amin, et al., 2016; Rezaei, Emami, & Valaei, 2016) have been conducted in describing the mechanism and process of satisfaction. There is limited research attempt to investigate the concept of satisfaction from its root (Ye et al., 2009). Nevertheless, research stream focus on examining the customer satisfaction and loyalty have gradually progressed from offline environment to online environment, especially marketing journals in past few years (Jaiswal, Niraj, & Venugopal, 2010). This is envisaged to be the similar case with the deployment of apps in a mobile setting. Customer satisfaction is the key factor in leading to subsequent loyalty, and resulting in increasing company profits (Finn et al., 2009).
Therefore, marketers have attempted to discover the major factors leading to customer loyalty which customer satisfaction is noticeably one of the major driving force behind (Chang & Chen, 2009). Loyal customers derived from app usage are vital as they are the contributors for the profitability by reducing the cost to serve the customer and benefit from the positive worth of mouth (Armesh, Salarzehi, Yaghoobi, Heydari, & Nikbin, 2010a).