1. Introduction
With the rapid development of mobile devices, consumption through mobile short-form videos has increased worldwide, impacting our daily lives unprecedentedly and changing how people search for and share information. In addition, mobile MSFV apps are transforming how e-commerce providers do business and are contributing to the sustainable development of e-commerce. MSFV apps provide e-commerce vendors with tools to edit video clips, typically 5–15 s long, to help drive business in short video applications.
In China, the MSFV app leader, Douyin (known outside the country as TikTok), has expanded its e-commerce activities to sell products and provide services and other forms of content. According to Statista.com [
1], there were more than 934 million short-form video users in China at the end of 2021, accounting for 90.5% of the country’s internet users. The Statista.com [
2] survey has also shown that the user base of Douyin in the Chinese market will surpass 835 million by 2025. Among these users, more than half of them accessed their Douyin account on mobile devices. Thanks to the MSFV app, traditional mobile e-commerce can integrate social media functions, video clips, and celebrities to improve digital customer experiences. Douyin has designed a range of shopping portals on different types of content to capture customers’ purchasing intentions after interacting with product content. Customers can easily be directed to the product page, whether a short-form video or a hashtag page. Customers can purchase products from the Douyin store via a short-form video, complete the transaction with Douyin Pay, and share their shopping experiences with their peers through social networking tools in the app. By incorporating these technological and social features into digital customer experiences, mobile e-commerce can evolve into sustainable e-commerce and revolutionize how people buy through their mobile devices.
The MSFV app enables mobile e-commerce providers to sell products, interact with customers, and cultivate customer relationships. The increased use of digital media has created a new channel for consumers to shop for goods and services. Through its broad coverage and value chain, MSFV shopping has become a vital component of the new economic cycle [
3]. Customers can actively interact with their peers, enriching their shopping experiences and making more informed purchasing decisions [
4]. Despite the rapid development of mobile e-commerce, MSFV shopping still faces many challenges and difficulties. For example, low customer loyalty results from uneven product quality, opaque prices, high refund rates, and customer complaints. Mobile e-commerce providers must effectively induce customer purchasing intention and improve customer loyalty to establish a presence in this business model.
A comprehensive review of the previous literature reveals a significant research gap. Most previous studies have tended to focus on various intentions or behaviors related to the application of MSFV apps, such as user experiences and technology adoption intent [
5], short-form video application addiction [
6], using motivation and influencing factors of users’ participation [
7], customers’ participation behaviors [
4], video formats [
8], short-form video app continuance intention to use [
9], content features of short-form video and customer purchase intentions [
10], and factors influencing users’ engagement behaviors [
11]. For example, Mou et al. [
9] found that the app recommendation algorithm positively affected individual satisfaction, the novelty of new products, and privacy concerns. A product’s reputation negatively moderated the recommendation algorithm’s influence on the privacy issue. Individuals’ privacy concerns positively impact privacy-protection behavior, and privacy-protection behavior positively impacts satisfaction. In addition, Ren et al. [
4] proved that positive customer involvement behaviors improved customers’ perceptions of value, which boosted consumers’ happiness. However, there are few studies that have examined digital customer experiential determinants (i.e., vividness, diagnosticity, participation, trust, recommendation, and commitment), customers’ stickiness to MSFV shopping, and customers’ loyalty in an integrated framework. To fill the gap, we must fully explain and improve our understanding of customers’ stickiness and loyalty behaviors in the context of MSFV shopping, using a framework that combines key content-related factors and seller-customer relationship-related factors.
Meanwhile, previous studies on customer loyalty have examined customer loyalty from various perspectives. Anderson et al. [
12] found that hedonic and utilitarian motivations affected the loyalty of social commerce websites. According to Hew et al. [
13], users who continued to use and were satisfied with mobile social commerce were more likely to be loyal to the brand. Cheng et al. [
14] found that trust in the app positively affected social purchasing intention, while trust in other members strongly affected word-of-mouth intention. To strengthen effective management processes and to increase customer repurchase intention, mobile e-commerce providers need to encourage cooperative behaviors [
14]. In addition, trust and identification with the virtual community have also been shown to influence customer engagement, which positively impacted customer loyalty [
15,
16]. However, very few studies have investigated customer loyalty in the context of MSFV shopping.
Along with this trend, this study examines the digital customer experience in MSFV shopping and its influence on customer stickiness and loyalty. We draw on the computer–human interaction approach and introduce content quality and relationship quality concepts to explore digital customer experience and investigate their influences on customers’ stickiness and loyalty toward MSFV shopping. In this study, content quality is measured through vividness and diagnosticity. Furthermore, we assess relationship quality through commitment, participation, trust, and recommendation. In addition, stickiness acts as a mediator between digital customer experience-related factors and customer loyalty. We focus on both attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty to examine customers’ responses more accurately and comprehensively. Jacoby et al. [
17] were the first authors who differentiated attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty based on reasoned action. According to Cachero-Martínez and Vazquez-Casielles [
18] and Bandyopadhyay and Martell [
19], there are two types of loyalty: attitudinal (or mental) loyalty, which refers to consumers’ intentions and inclinations toward specific products or service providers, and behavioral loyalty, which relates to customers who repurchase products from a given vendor. To achieve the above research purposes, we suggest the following main research questions:
Q1 How does digital customer experience (i.e., content quality and relationship quality) predict customers’ stickiness to MSFV shopping?
Q2 How do customers’ stickiness to MSFV shopping affect their attitudinal and behavioral loyalty?
Q3 How does attitudinal loyalty influence behavioral loyalty in the context of MSFV shopping?
This study is structured based on the following sections: We review the previous relevant literature and propose a research model and hypotheses in
Section 2 and
Section 3; in
Section 4, the research methodology and data collection are described; we distribute analysis results based on the proposed research model in
Section 5; in the last section, we summarize the main research findings and provide implications for both theory and management.
6. Discussion and Implications for Research and Practice
6.1. Discussion of Key Findings
MSFV shopping provides customers with various contents and improves their consumption experiences. Through the lens of digital customer experiences, this study explores customer loyalty in MSFV shopping. We take a human–computer interaction (HCI) approach and address the effects of content quality and relationship quality on customer loyalty through the stickiness of MSFV shopping. Under a HCI approach, MSFV shopping qualities (content quality and relationship quality) are used to assess the digital customer experience. Two types of content quality and four types of relationship quality are explored: diagnosticity, vividness, commitment, participation, trust, and recommendation. Furthermore, stickiness acts as a psychological mediator between digital customer experience and customer response (loyalty). We used findings from previous related studies to demonstrate how these concepts could be operationalized [
43,
44,
46,
60,
84,
85,
90].
First of all, our findings indicate that the content quality (i.e., diagnosticity and vividness) within MSFV shopping is a strong indicator (β = 0.7,
p < 0.001) of relationship quality (commitment, participation, trust, and recommendation). This confirms the previous research findings [
43,
65]. Customers can obtain product information through well-designed content in MSFV shopping before purchasing. As a result, customers rely more on vivid and diagnostic demonstrations to make rational decisions. They may become committed to MSFV shopping, build trust with a seller, participate in activities provided by a seller more frequently, and recommend MSFV shopping to their friends. When these benefits and good experiences add up, they help to build a good relationship with MSFV shopping sellers. Second, the findings show that content quality (β = 0.367,
p < 0.001) and relationship quality (β = 0.428,
p < 0.001) can both significantly predict customer stickiness in MSFV shopping, which provides a valuable supplement to the existing literature. Even though several studies have investigated customer behavior in the context of MSFV shopping, few studies have addressed MSFV shopping stickiness. Therefore, our research contributes to a better understanding of the stickiness in MSFV shopping. Stickiness is also found to have a positive influence on both attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty. This is consistent with Roy [
50], who found a direct effect of stickiness on loyalty in an e-retail context. Third, stickiness positively mediates the relationship between MSFV shopping qualities (content quality and relationship quality) and customer loyalty. Therefore, it can be concluded that content quality and relationship quality are significant factors affecting customers’ stickiness to MSFV shopping, and therefore, affecting customer loyalty. MSFV shopping operators should pay special attention to these elements to cultivate customer interest, since customers first and foremost rely heavily on the content that the seller demonstrates before making a formal buying decision. Developing new mechanisms to enhance content quality and building a good and high-quality relationship with customers should result in them sticking to MSFV shopping and further improve their loyalty.
As compared with previous studies, this study adds to the MSFV shopping literature in the following ways: First, this study demonstrates the value of applying the HCI approach to MSFV shopping. In contrast to previous research that has focused on technological determinants and user behavior, we investigated the relationship between digital customer experience and customer loyalty. Second, we developed two constructs (vividness and diagnosticity) to measure content quality based on the nature of MSFV shopping. Furthermore, commitment, participation, recommendation, and trust were adopted to assess relationship quality by synthesizing prior research findings. Lastly, the role of stickiness as a psychological mediator has been proven. This study could provide researchers with ideas for more in-depth research on the digital customer experience and customer loyalty in MSFV shopping. It could also provide MSFV shopping vendors more ideas for improving the quality of MSFV shopping and enhancing customer loyalty.
6.2. Implications for Research
This study contributes several theoretical implications for existing MSFV shopping research. First and foremost, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first study to use an HCI approach to investigate the factors that influence customer loyalty in the context of MSFV shopping based on content quality and relationship quality. By reviewing the limited research in this area, we found that the topics discussed have been focused on the intention of adopting MSFV applications [
5], continuance intention to use MSFV applications [
9,
91], and discontinuous usage behavior [
92]. Furthermore, in recent years, HCI research has focused on feature recognition, brain–computer interface, online social communication, user interface design, and task efficiency [
93]. The existing research, however, does not consider the application’s various aspects, such as the technology’s structure, concept, and psychological impact. The current study thoroughly examines the impact of HCI on customer loyalty in the context of MSFV shopping. Furthermore, it strengthens the phenomenon’s internal and external mechanisms and provides valuable application research for the study of HCI theory.
Second, the findings demonstrated the importance of content quality in facilitating customer stickiness and developing customer loyalty in MSFV shopping. This study examined content quality as a multidimensional construct in terms of vividness and diagnosticity. In addition, we examined relationship quality as a multidimensional construct. In contrast to earlier studies [
32,
39,
43] that measured relationship quality in terms of commitment, trust, and satisfaction, we evaluated it in terms of commitment, trust, participation, and recommendation. The results demonstrated the significant relationship between content quality and relationship quality, supporting previous studies in the mobile commerce field. This study also provided empirical evidence that this framework could be extended to the MSFV shopping context. These findings provide a better understanding of what types of MSFV shopping features would facilitate customer loyalty as well as theoretical guidance for developing HCI activities.
Third, we confirmed the mediating effect of stickiness among content quality, relationship quality, and customer loyalty. This indicates that vivid and diagnostic content and seller–buyer relationship quality can influence loyalty through stickiness. Although many studies have emphasized the importance of stickiness in virtual space, empirical research on stickiness in the context of MSFV shopping has been lacking. This study filled this gap by providing empirical evidence of the interdependence among content quality, relationship quality, stickiness, and customer loyalty in MSFV shopping. The findings indicate that stickiness is an important psychological component that can help customers to develop loyalty and participate in HCI.
6.3. Implications for Practice
In addition to theoretical contributions, this study also provides several important practical implications for MSFV shopping operators. First, the findings showed that content quality was a critical predictor of relationship quality and customer stickiness. Therefore, MSFV shopping operators need to make greater efforts to develop more mechanisms to enhance information content quality. For example, operators can improve the digital customer experience by allowing them to try out products using immersive technology such as virtual reality. Concerning vividness, MSFV shopping operators need to pay more attention to demonstrating information. They can make videos more vivid to make a more interesting and useful presentation, which will help to better target customers’ understanding of the information. They should also consider including emotionally provoking and diverse content in their advertisements so that they can interact with their customers. In addition to entertaining and engaging customers, providers need to consider incorporating a variety of incentives to increase customer engagement and customer stickiness. For example, they could add interactive links and themes to make the content more appealing and create a reward system that encourages customers to share their experiences.
Regarding diagnosticity, understanding the various elements of the multimedia presentation can also help to improve the effectiveness of MSFV shopping content. MSFV shopping operators should make reviews and posts more visible and readable to enhance digital customers’ experiences. Operators can also enlist the help of celebrities to promote their products. Celebrities must be knowledgeable about the products, and their image must be consistent with the products being sold.
Second, MSFV shopping operators must conduct market research and promote products based on customer preferences. This would help them to have a good relationship with their customers. Positive experiences in MSFV shopping would increase mutual trust between a seller and customer, contribute to a customer committing to a relationship, increase customer participation in MSFV shopping, and increase the likelihood that they recommend it to their friends. Tracking and managing customer interactions is another strategy that MSFV shopping providers could consider. This would allow them to develop more effective promotional strategies, boost conversion rates, and strengthen seller–customer relationships. Highly engaged customers are a great source of information, and providers should be able to learn from them.
Third, the results proved that stickiness mediated the relationships among content quality, relationship quality, and customer loyalty. These findings provided suggestions to MSFV shopping operators on making the content sticky. Since customer stickiness is crucial in MSFV shopping, MSFV shopping operators should develop tactics to increase customer stickiness. For instance, MSFV shopping operators could develop attractive design features and could introduce innovative functions to improve customers’ user experiences. Finally, MSFV shopping operators need to cultivate a positive customer attitude, since a positive attitude toward MSFV shopping influences customers’ evaluations. MSFV shopping operators need to take steps to offer reliable products at competitive prices, to provide better customer service after the sale, and to improve the supervision mechanism in the app to foster a positive customer attitude.