ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Advertising and Marketing Communication
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1605171
Loyalty Beyond Transactions: The role Role of perceived Perceived Brand Ethics in e-Commerce
Provisionally accepted
Nathalie Peña García1*
Enrique ter Horst2- 1Colegio de Estudios Superiores de Administración (CESA), Bogotá, Cundinamarca, Colombia
- 2University of Los Andes, Colombia, Bogotá, Cundinamarca, Colombia
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
As digital platforms increasingly shape consumer behavior, understanding the factors that drive customer loyalty has become a critical area of research. This study examines the role of Perceived Brand Ethics (PBE), Trust, and Customer Experience (CX) in fostering Brand Engagement (BE) and their subsequent effect on Loyalty within the e-commerce, food delivery, and transportation sectors. Using a cross-sectional survey of 1,032 users of Mercado Libre, Rappi, and Uber in Colombia, an emerging economy, data was analyzed through Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) and Multigroup Analysis (PLS-MGA) to test the proposed hypotheses. Results confirm that PBE significantly influences Trust and CX, both of which enhance consumer perceptions, but impactenhancing consumer perceptions and impacting BE through different pathways. While CX strongly predicts BE, Trust does not exhibit a direct effect ondirectly affect engagement. Additionally, BE demonstrates a robust effect on Loyalty, underscoring the importance of emotional connections in digital consumer relationships. Platform-specific differences highlight variations in these relationships across service categories. This study contributes to the literature by integrating ethical perceptions into engagement and loyalty models, while offering managerial implications for digital platforms seeking to strengthen customer relationships through ethical transparency, experience optimization, and engagement strategies. These findings provide actionable insights for enhancing and sustaining competitive advantage in digital platforms. Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Fuente: Sin Negrita, Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos) Con formato: Inglés (Estados Unidos)
Keywords: Perceived brand ethics, E-commerce platforms, Loyalty, Trust, Customer experience, Brand engagement
Received: 02 Apr 2025; Accepted: 15 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Peña García and ter Horst. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nathalie Peña García, Colegio de Estudios Superiores de Administración (CESA), Bogotá, Cundinamarca, Colombia
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.