CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION
6.2 Limitations and future research
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The practical implication of this study is to give e-service providers a guideline of which types of service deviation may happen on the service they offered. To reduce customers’ dissatisfaction and create higher repurchases or revisit rate, it is necessary for service providers to recognize these deviations and further try to prevent its occurrence in the stage of service design. On the other hand, we also tried to inform service providers which factor that will influence customers’ switching behavior after experiencing service deviation. E-service providers may provide dissatisfactory customers from switching to other service providers by building up these factors in their service. When it comes to theoretical contribution, there are numerous previous researches worked on factors that affect customers’ switching behaviors. However, previous research focused more on physical products and general services. In this study, we focused on services delivered through e-platforms and tried to verify whether the factors in physical products and general services will also exist in e-services. Apart from those existing factors referred to in previous research, investigating whether there are other factors that have not yet been addressed in the literature but that play important roles in the Internet environment and enrich the theoretical foundation of customers’ switching behavior is also one of the important objectives of this study.
6.2 Limitations and future research
Although this study provides insight into the types of service deviations that most frequently happen in e-service and the factors that have the most influence on customers’ switching behavior, there are still some limitations. The first concern is about participants. Although we collected 798 questionnaires, most of the participants were between 21 and 40 years old. The experience of these participants may not
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represent all customers’ experiences of e-service. Therefore, we recommend that future research should verify these service deviations and factors by collecting a larger amount of data from more varied participants. The second concern is data collection. Due to the design of the questionnaire, we could only collect one experience of one type of e-service from one participant. However, in the same type of e-service, one participant may use more than one service provided by different providers. If the the study participants chose other experiences to answer the questionnaire, the service deviations they perceived and the reasons that influenced them to stay with their current provider may be a little different. For this reasons, we recommend future research can focus on one particular e-service type and expanding the participants to obtain more accurate results.
In this study, we examined service deviations from the viewpoint of e-service customers. Therefore, the future work would hopefully explore service deviations from the service providers’ perspective, such as investigating whether service providers know the existence of these service deviations, and if they know, what the reasons are that they allow these deviations to exist in their services. Otherwise, even though there are factors that affect dissatisfied customers’ switching behavior to make them stay with incumbent service providers, we also encourage future work to determine how service providers can decrease the service deviations in the e-services they provide, and to study the decrease strategies differences among various types of e-service? Another recommendation for future work is to follow the previous one. If we can find out the decrease strategies of reducing service deviations, then there appears another question, which is when service providers should choose to set up factors that can prevent customers from switching, as well as when they should decide to narrow service deviations. Furthermore, does this decision vary across different
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types of e-service? We hope that the findings of this study will provide a base for future study of service deviations, affect the factors of customers’ switching behavior on e-platforms, and provide a guide for designers of e-services.
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APPENDIX A
Questionnaire :
Personal Information 1. Gender
□Male □Female 2. Age
□Under 20 □21-30 □31-40 □41-50 □51-60 □over 60 3. Education
□Under High School □High School □Vocational College □College/University □MSc/MBA □PhD 4. Average monthly income
□Under NT$ 10,000 □NT$10,001- NT$20,000 □NT$20,001- NT$30,000
□NT$30,001- NT$40,000 □NT$40,001- NT$50,000 □Over NT$50,001 5. Average time spent on Internet each day
□Under 1 hour □1-5 hours □6-10 hours □11-15 hours □Over 15 hours 6. Major events while online
□Searching for information □Browsing around the Web □Watching video □Online shopping
□Playing online games □Instant messaging □Writing blogs □Others: _____________________
E-commerce (ex: Groupon, Books/Barnes & Noble, Amazon…)
Please choose an e-commerce site with which you had an unsatisfactory experience. Write down its service name and answer the following questions.
Service Name：_______________________
1. Which types of dissatisfaction have you experienced when you are using this service? (Multiple Choices)
□ The interface is unattractive or the description of the Web site is imprecise.
□ The quality of the service is unreliable.
□ It is not easy or convenient to use this service.
□ There is security or privacy concerns when using this service.
□ It is hard to access this service.
□ The responsiveness of this service is slow.
□ The content/information that this service offers is poor in quality or in quantity.
□ This service, or the service provider, lacks credibility.
□ There is inappropriate advertising. (Ex: too much, inappropriate content, or present
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□ It is difficult to contact the service providers or customer service representatives.
□ It does not offer enough personalization.
□ Some functions I really want are not offered.
□ There are service errors, including system shut down or functions working improperly.
□ It offers too many functions that exceed my needs.
□ There are deviations between searching results and my expectations.
□ My native language is not supported.
□ Others：____________________________________________________
2. Did you leave the service provider and switch to an alternative because of those unsatisfactory experiences that you indicated above?
□ Yes. I switched to another service provider.
□ No. I still use this service. (Please answer Question 3.) 3. What are the factors that make you keep on using this service?
Strongly (1) Although having some unsatisfactory
experience, this service is not bad enough to make me leave it and switch to an alternative service. Therefore, I continue using this service.
1 2 3 4 5
(2) The dissatisfaction I have experienced did not occurr on the core service. Since the quality of the core service is still good, I continue using this service.
1 2 3 4 5
(3) Because I think the service provider has the sincerity to solve our problems, I continue using this service.
1 2 3 4 5
(4) Current service has more users than alternative
services, so I continue using this service. 1 2 3 4 5
(5) Because many of my friends are using this
service, I continue using this service. 1 2 3 4 5
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(6) Because I am still using other services from this provider, therefore, I continue using this service.
1 2 3 4 5
(7) Since there are uncertainties about the service quality of the alternatives, I continue using this service.
1 2 3 4 5
(8) The service quality of alternatives is worse than the current provider, so I continue using this service.
1 2 3 4 5
(9) There are no other alternative services on the
Internet, so I continue using this service. 1 2 3 4 5
(10) If I switched to an alternative service, I would need to spend extra time and effort to research and evaluate it, so I continue using this service.
1 2 3 4 5
(11) If I switched to an alternative service, I would need to spend extra time and effort on getting used to the new service, so I continue using this service.
1 2 3 4 5
(12) If I switched to an alternative service, I would need to spend extra time and effort on
adjusting to the new service (including some personalization to meet my habits, data
re-entry, etc.), so I continue using this service.
1 2 3 4 5
(13) I would lose the benefits or rewards provided by the current provider if I switch to an
alternative service, so I continue using this service.
1 2 3 4 5
(14) Others：_________________________________________________________________