AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS ON E-TAILING AND CUSTOMER PATRONAGE: A PARTICULARS REFERENCE TO PORT HARCOURT MALL, RIVERS STATE - NIGERIA

Abstract

The study empirically investigated the relationship between e-tailing influence and customer patronage with a particulars reference to Port Harcourt Mall, Rivers State – Nigeria. The study population comprised seventy (70) respondents from Port Harcourt shopping mall, also,   Krejcie and Morgan, 1970 statistical techniques was adopted to determine the sample size of fifty - nine (59), and data for the study were collected through administered questionnaire, validity and reliability of the instrument were employed. Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient was adopted for the testing of the hypotheses with the assistance of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The result revealed that Business -to –consumer (B2C)), Businesses -to –business (B2B), and Consumer -to –consumer (C2C) has significant positive relationship with customer patronage. The study concluded that e- tailing is progressively prevalent due to the suitability and its propositions to consumers and retailers. The study recommended that Government should provide enabling environment to facilitating e-tailing business as a digital technology for fastest and quickest means of purchasing, selling and delivering of   goods and services.  E-tailing firms should adopt the following e-tailing strategy such as social media platform to reach out target market to increase customer patronage.  Firms that are  into e-tailing business should improve on their mobile devices that can impact on customers which will affect positively on activities such as product display, product quality, prices and benefit visual display in order to increase firms customer patronage, entice new customer and retain existing customers.