18 A Dynamic Examination of Online Customer Gratitude and Trust A Dynamic Examination of Online Customer Gratitude and Trust Min-Hsin Huang, Department of Business Management, National Sun Yat-sen University Li-Ting Shih, Department of Business Management, National Sun Yat-sen University 1. Purpose and Objective Although previous literature has suggested that the relationship between enterprises and customers would change over time, most studies still examine their theoretical models by using the level of relational constructs measured at a specific time point. Customer gratitude is a new mediator in the theory of Relationship Marketing (RM), alongside other existed mediators such as commitment, trust and satisfaction (Palmatier, Jarvis, Bechkoff, and Kardes, 2009). However, few RM studies of e-commerce have taken customer gratitude into consideration. According to the research of Palmatier, Dant, Grewal, and Evans (2006), this study use relationship benefits as the antecedents of customer gratitude. In the past, most prior research on relationship benefits has been related to physical service (Gwinner, Gremler, and Bitner, 1998). This study considers relationship benefits to be an antecedent of customer gratitude and trust, and uses the constructs of customer gratitude velocity and trust velocity to represent changes in the rate and direction of both customer gratitude and trust. The first purpose of this study is to explore how customer gratitude and trust influence customer loyalty over time. The second purpose is to examine the relative effects of static and dynamic components in order to clarify the ability of relationship velocity on predicting customers’ future behaviors. Lastly, we observe online shopping behavior over time to analyze how customer gratitude and trust influence customer loyalty attitudinally and behaviorally. 2. Methodology Palmatier, Houston, Dant, and Grewal (2013) propose the relationship dynamics theory to discuss the rate and direction of change in a given relationship over time. Based on the relationship dynamics theory, this study uses the concepts of gratitude velocity and trust velocity to examine how they influence attitudinal and behavioral loyalty. We also use the Latent Growth Curve Model (LGCM) to analyze longitudinal data collected from
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