Abstract This paper focuses on the context of online customer’s loyalty towards a specific web store, aims to explore online customer satisfaction and customer inertia’s antecedent effect on online customer loyalty, and the moderating effects of alternative attraction and online involvement. Based on the data collected from 354 online consumers, we use the SEM and hierarchical regression methods, and get the following conclusions: Online customer satisfaction, customer inertia are positively related to online customer loyalty; Online involvement positively moderated the relationship between online customer satisfaction and online customer loyalty; Alternative attraction negatively moderated the relationship of online customer satisfaction, customer inertia and online customer loyalty. The implicit meanings are, online customer satisfaction and customer inertia can lead to the “lock in” effect towards online customer loyalty, the effect was even strengthened by online involvement, while alternative attraction as a counteracting factor, may weaken the aforementioned “lock in” effect. Online customer loyalty mechanism is a dynamic contingency mechanism.
