Explaining Customer Loyalty in Online Retailing through Online Relationship Marketing: The Mediating Role of Online Trust

This study aims to examine the effect of online relationship marketing on customer loyalty, with a specific emphasis on the mediating role of online trust in the context of online retailing. The research is applied in terms of its purpose and descriptive-survey as well as cross-sectional in terms of its methodology. The statistical population of this study comprised all customers of Digikala, a prominent Iranian online retailer, from whom a final sample of 384 individuals was selected and examined. The required data were collected using a structured questionnaire with a five-point Likert scale. The collected data were then analyzed utilizing SPSS and SmartPLS 4 software, applying the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach. The empirical results demonstrated that online relationship marketing exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on online trust. Furthermore, online trust was found to have a positive and significant impact on customer loyalty, while the direct effect of online relationship marketing on loyalty was also confirmed to be significant . Additionally, the indirect effect of online relationship marketing on loyalty through the mediation of online trust was significant, which indicates a partial and complementary mediating role for online trust. Ultimately, the proposed research model successfully explained 45.1% of the variance in online trust and 64.2% of the variance in customer loyalty. The findings suggest that targeted communications, relational benefits, and store reliability can effectively strengthen customer loyalty by enhancing online trust.