Antecedents and consequences of online buying behavior: a mediation study Suhail Ahmad Bhat, Sheikh Basharul Islam and Umer Mushtaq Lone Department of Management Studies, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India Abstract Purpose – The study is aimed to identify the determinants of online buying behavior and their associations with the consequences of online buying behavior. The study adopted an e-loyalty framework and investigated causal links among functionality, usability, trust, commitment and loyalty. In addition, the study also attempted to investigate the mediating role of trust and commitment between online buying determinants and online purchasing outcomes. The demographic variables of age, gender and income are used as control variables. Design/methodology/approach – An online questionnaire survey was conducted on Internet users by adopting purposive sampling technique. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed for measurement development, SEM was used for testing causal links, and percentile bootstrap with 95% confidence interval was used for mediation analysis. Findings – Significant positive relationships were found among functionality, usability, trust, commitment and loyalty. Trust was found to fully mediate the effect of functionality and usability on loyalty. It was also found that commitment fully mediates the effect of functionality on loyalty. Research limitations/implications – However, caution is advised while generalizing results of this study. The study was conducted on online retailing only. The authors recommend future studies to extend the research in other e-commerce sectors and also to perform a comparative study between online and offline retailing. Practical implications – This study provides some practical implications to website developers in designing a web page that caters the functionality and usability aspects in understanding e-loyalty formation process so that appropriate marketing strategies and tactics can be established to accommodate customized loyalty of each customer. Originality/value – The study demonstrates the customer loyalty formation process in online retailing. Scanty literature has witnessed mediating role of trust and commitment in the relationships among functionality, usability and loyalty along with age, gender and monthly family income as controls in Indian sub-continent. Keywords Functionality, Usability, Trust, Commitment, Loyalty Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction Online business has shown tremendous growth across the world in the last few decades. Globally, online retail sales during 2017 were observed to be $2.38 trillion, and it has been estimated to hit $6.54 trillion by 2023 (eMarketer, 2019). Specifically, the Indian online retail sales have been estimated to be $120 billion in terms of the gross merchandise value (GMV) by the end of 2025 (IBEF, 2021). Further, it has also been estimated that the total number of online shoppers will increase to 175 million, and about 33% of the customers will drive two-thirds of their total shopping via the Internet (Google-A.T. Kearney, 2016). This prolific growth in the online retail industry in India is attributed to some key factors such as high-level smartphone usage, high-speed Internet, IT innovations, increasing purchasing power and an incredible increase in Internet penetration (Raman, 2019). The young population of India is going to propel the Indian e-commerce market to exceed the e-commerce market of the USA. As a result, India will take the second-largest position in the global e- commerce industry by 2034. Despite tremendous growth of online purchasing, voluminous consumers signify their dissatisfaction with online shopping experiences (Luo et al., 2012; SAJBS 12,1 54 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/2398-628X.htm Received 3 July 2020 Revised 29 November 2020 10 February 2021 14 March 2021 7 April 2021 Accepted 11 April 2021 South Asian Journal of Business Studies Vol. 12 No. 1, 2023 pp. 54-78 © Emerald Publishing Limited 2398-628X DOI 10.1108/SAJBS-07-2020-0223