eCRM features and customer loyalty : A qualitative study within the video streaming industry

Sammanfattning: The video streaming industry has grown at a rapid speed during the past decade and has becomea trending topic in regard to technological advancements. Nowadays, there are manycompetitors in the market, and it is getting harder to stand out from the competition. Furthermore, the customers are demanding more in their choice of video streaming servicesand are expecting several features and functions in order to retain the service. Electronic Customer Relationship Management (eCRM) is a tool that has been used by providers of videostreaming services in order to improve long-term customer relationships. eCRM has beenresearched before as well as implemented by many companies. However, there are stillresearch gaps in relation to a potential impact that eCRM features have on customer loyalty, aswell as a managerial need to investigate these issues further. The purpose of this thesis is to develop deeper knowledge about how pre-, at- and postpurchase features of eCRM affect the customer loyalty in the video streaming industry. Thecontext of the study was the video streaming industry as it has increased majorly in popularityover the past years and there are many features to consider in the purchasing process. Therefore,we developed a conceptual model that was based on prior research to investigate the influenceof specific features on customer loyalty. The empirical data collection was conductedconsidering the conceptual model. This study was conducted by using a qualitative methodwith semi structured interviews, the respondents consisted of active users of a streaming serviceat the age between 18 to 34 years old. By analyzing the empirical data, we could determinefeatures of eCRM that affected and did not affect customer loyalty in our study. The findings showed that all the steps of the purchase process had features that affectedcustomer loyalty. The features of pre-purchase that we found relevant to customer loyalty inour study were captivating customers, which refers to the ability to attract customers' attention. The features of captivating customers are marketing, popularity, and recommendations, andout of these features, it was popularity and recommendation that we found affecting thecustomers loyalty. The features of the second step in the purchase process, at-purchase, that wefound affecting customer loyalty in our study were assortment, price, and convenience. Assortment refers to the content and supply of the service while the price refers to how muchthe service cost. Convenience is divided into four parts, the number of profiles, active users,devices that can use the service and the ability to stream offline, all these features exceptstreaming offline were found to have an effect on customer loyalty. Post-purchase refers to astage after the purchase has been made and, in our study, we found that the feature of clientcommunication has an effect on customer loyalty. Client communication is the communicationthat accrue between company and customer.