What drives consumers' active participation in the online channel? Customer equity, experience quality, and relationship proneness

While the proliferation of online channel has promoted consumers active participation in the value-creation process, affecting the way consumers transact and interact with brands, this increased consumer empowerment also has its dark side. Drawing from social exchange theory, we aim to offer a unifying framework to understand the linkages between customer equity, experience quality and non-transactional behaviors (including co-creation and word-of-mouth) in an e-commerce context. We also suggest that relationship proneness moderates the established links. With the final valid sample for 761 online banking customers obtained via the survey in a European financial services company, we apply partial least squares and develop a multi-group analysis. Customer equity, as a global assessment of brand, is vital for the development of positive customer experience, which consequently promotes the enforcement of non-transactional behaviors. Finally, relationship proneness strengthens the impact of customer equity and customer experience quality. Implications for theory and management are discussed.