The Effect of Purchase Intention and Customer Behavior during the Covid-19 Pandemic on Ride-Hailing Application Loyalty

Abstract

Changes in lifestyle have a significant impact on the development of IT services, especially transportation. Consumers easily order vehicles anywhere and anytime. Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) assists consumer decisions, but the information conveyed is less consistent and creates distrust. The COVID-19 pandemic causes company revenue to decline, even though implementation is said to be successful if it gets positive feedback and increases productivity. So, this study aims to determine the factors influencing purchase intention and customer behavior during the pandemic on ride-hailing application loyalty. The data used is 17 informants of Go-Jek, Grab, and Maxim application users. Using ewom with phenomenological qualitative methods analyzes user perceptions based on application experience. Data were analyzed using Atlas.ti software. The results show that the ewom theory is still relevant in the era of social media, especially during the pandemic. The main findings show customer loyalty consists of information quality; reviews; costs, trust; subjective norms; sentiment, emotion; satisfaction; and service quality. The new findings show the lack of influence of sentiments on customer behavior towards ride-hailing use. This study uses industry-level objects so that future research can focus on one company and evaluate the sentiment-emotion factor after the pandemic to get detailed results so that it can fully represent the existing phenomenon.