HOW GROUP MEMBERSHIP OF PRIVATE TRAFFICE OPERATION IMPACT CUSTOMER LOYALTY INTENTIONSS IN FOOD SERVICE INDUSTRY OF CHINA: A MODEL OF GOAL-DIRECTED BEHAVIOR

Abstract

With the rapid development of E-commerce and enormous usage of social media in China, numerous traditional business and companies has chosen digital transformation as crucial marketing strategy for increasing selling, saving cost, attracting new customer and remain loyalty customer based on the function of digital network platform. The new concept of private traffic operation was brought up in comparison with public traffic, it has seen unprecedented growth over the past few years in China especially during the lockdown of Covid-19 epidemic. Lots of web influencers would use attractive photos, fantastic story text and interesting video to drive traffic to their channels on social media platform as well as some companies would follow the same pattern from marketing viewpoint. Many primary studies focus on the marketing strategies about E-commerce such as TikTok to increase market share and promote their products. Based on the gap of primary studies, this study only focuses on maintain group membership engagement of brand loyalty and to promote more purchase behavior via private traffic operation as the aim in application for companies, also this study focuses on food service industry in China, make important practical contributions to some restaurants or coffee shops` loyalty program design in the future. This paper on model of goal-directed behavior (MGB) and extended this model by incorporating the factors of group membership of private traffic operation, tested the its impact on the behavioral intention of customers` loyalty. This study can make important practical contributions to companies’ loyalty program design based on private traffic operation in food service industry of China.