The results of this study confirm that the e-service quality of the online auction website regarding efficiency, privacy, and compensation has significant impact on overall satisfaction of online auction website. In addition, the e-service quality of the online auction seller regarding fulfillment, responsiveness, compensation, and contact has significant impact on overall satisfaction of the online auction website. These results demonstrate that e-service quality is very important for securing buyer satisfaction. Both the online auction website and the online auction seller have to pay attention to various aspects of e-service quality improvement to increase buyer satisfaction.
It is also found that overall satisfaction of the online auction website and the online auction seller will not only affect the loyalty intention of the online auction website and the online auction seller, but also affect the SAI of the buyers on the online auction website and the online auction seller. SAI is found to affect loyalty intention in both the online auction website and the online auction seller. These results again exhibit the pivotal role of overall satisfaction in forming buyer loyalty intention toward the online auction website and online auction seller. Without satisfaction, buyers won’t invest specific asset on the relationship with the online auction website
22
and the online auction seller. Without satisfaction, buyers won’t show positive loyalty intention toward the online auction website and the online auction seller. Both online auction websites and online auction sellers have to provide chances for their satisfied buyers to experience more aspects of their services to create SAI with them. Buyers’
SAI on the online auction website refers to investments in physical or human assets that are dedicated to a particular auction website and whose redeployment entails considerable switching cost. The higher the SAI of the buyers, the stronger the loyalty intention.
It is interested to find that loyalty intention toward the online auction seller positively affects the loyalty intention toward the online auction website, whereas the loyalty intention toward the online auction website negatively affects the loyalty intention toward the online auction seller. These results demonstrate that the managers in the online auction website shouldn’t overreact to the strong relationship between buyers and a specific seller. The positive relationship between buyers and sellers can induce buyer’s loyalty intention toward the online auction website because it improves confidence for the buyer in the online auction website in attracting good sellers. This would induce them to use more the service provided by the online auction website. More importantly, when a buyer is loyal to an online auction website, s/he will be less likely to stick to a specific seller in the online auction website. This may provide reason why eBay enjoy ever strong competitive advantage in the US market (Aldridge 2004), while its Asian expansion has been rocky (Vara and Chao 2006). In most of these markets, eBay was a late entrant and cannot provide adapted e-service quality in the markets in the very beginning.
The results of this study provide less positive news for the online auction seller. A seller in an online auction website should be very careful in making online auction
website change decision. Although a seller can secure buyers’ loyalty intention by providing strong e-service quality, overall satisfaction and SAI, the buyers may not be very enthusiastic in moving with it to other auction website. More importantly, since sellers normally have to invest specific asset in its relationship with the online auction website such as the knowledge of using the online auction website and the accumulated credit point in the website, etc, it becomes more difficult for it to switch among different online auction website as it would wish. The decision of changing
online auction websites to sell it products should go gradually instead of at once.
There are several limitations for this study. The first limitation is the cross-sectional design employed. To provide a stronger inference, the model developed and tested here could benefit from being tested in a longitudinal design.
Second, this study focuses solely on buyers’ perception on the online auction website and the seller in the website. Further research can incorporate the relationship between the seller and the online auction website to explore the interactive relationship among these three parties. Finally, our study examines the antecedents of the online auction website and the online auction seller in a single country. Although this setting allowed for control over extraneous factors, the findings may have limited generalizability to other countries. Past research has found that culture plays a significant role in Internet based e-shopping behaviors (Liao and Cheung 2001). The strength and relative importance of the proposed constructs in this study may differ by culture. More studies in other societies is needed for confirming the proposed model.
References
Aldridge, A. (2004), ―EBay is Emerging as The New Channel to Market,‖ Marketing, (August 18), 15.
24
Anderson, James C. and David W. Gerbing (1988), ―Structural Equation Modeling in Practice: A Review and Recommended Two-Step Approach,‖ Psychological Bulletin 103 (3), 411-423.
Anderson, Eugene W. and Mary W. Sullivan (1993), ―The Antecedents and Conse-quences of Customer Satisfaction for Firms,‖ Marketing Science ,12 (Spring), 125-143.
Andreassen T. W. and B. Lindestad (1998), ―Customer loyalty and complex services:
The impact of corporate image on quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty for customers with varying degrees of service expertise,‖ International Journal of Service
Industry Management, 9(1), 7-23.
Bagozzi, Richard P., Youjae Yi, and Lynn W. Phillips (1992). ―Assessing Construct Validity in Organizational Research,‖ Administrative Science Quarterly 36, 421-458.
Bitner Mary Jo. and Amy R. Hubbert (1994), ―Encounter Satisfaction Versus Overall Satisfaction Versus Quality,‖ in Service Quality: New Directions in Theory and
Practice. Eds. R. T. Rust and R.L. Oliver. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 72-94.
Bollen, K. A. (1989), Structural Equations with Latent Variables. John Wiley & Son, New York.
Bolton, Ruth N. (1998), ―A Dynamic Model of the Duration of the Customer’s Relationship with a Continuous Service Provider: The Role of Satisfaction,‖