Discussion, implications, and limitations
Findings
The key objective of this study has been to analyse the role of customers’ self-efficacy and satisfaction in building post-adoption loyalty towards mobile retail applications. The results of this study indicate somewhat interesting picture. First, service evaluations, i.e. service experience and navigability serve as experiential cues and influence customers’ self-efficacy and satisfaction in the post-adoption stage. Aesthetics and trust were found to have a mixed influence on customers’ self-efficacy and satisfaction. While aesthetics do help in build self-efficacy, its role in building satisfaction has not been found to be significant. This finding may be attributed to the expectations of customers at the post-adoption stage of interface aesthetics as pre-requisite and not really a delight. Interestingly, customers do not find trust as a significant contributor to self-efficacy as well as to satisfaction. This finding indicates that trust in the retailer related to honouring the order with the expected authentic merchandise is a strong pre-requisite for customers to try a new mobile application. However, once adopted, trust seems to be moving out of the scheme of consideration from the minds of the consumers. Furthermore in India, in around 80 per cent of online purchases, the payments are made using “cash on delivery” mode after checking the product at the receipt. Trust-related aspects with reference to financial fraud and product quality, therefore, have low relevance in the post-adoption stage. Also, leading fashion retailers like Myntra allow customers to try out the clothes and return in case of issues related to feel, colour, size, fit, etc. This makes trust somewhat less important as customers are assured of refund in case of expectation mismatch from the merchandise.
