E-SERVICE QUALITY

As the Internet has remained a crucial channel for selling most types of

received considerable attention in academic research. Rust and Lemon (2001) described Electronic service (E-Service) as “providing a superior experience to consumers with respect to the interactive flow of information”. Accordingly, on-line service can be divided into a functional dimension (what is delivered in term of service outcome) and a technical dimension (how is it delivered in term of service process), Grönroos et al. (2000) provided a definition of NetOffer model. Many researchers thought that the definition of e-service should include all cues and encounters that occur before, during and after the electronic service delivery (Zeithaml et al., 2002; Parasuraman et al., 2005).

E-Ratings, a section of a well-known magazine for rating the quality of products and services, Consumer Reports evaluates the quality of service provided on a website. There are three criteria that E-Ratings use to evaluate a website:

credibility, usability and content. Similarly, BizRate.com creates a measurement based on ten dimensions to evaluate e-service quality. The “Webby Awards” from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Science also has their own criteria for evaluating the quality of a website. Final, the award for website quality given by Worldbestwebsites.com evaluates quality by five criteria. The details are shown in Table 2.2.

The five dimensions in SERVQUAL and SERVPERF models can measure service quality well in off-line environments, however, on-line services have unique characteristics that should be contained, for example, connectivity and server problems (Collier and Bienstock, 2006). There are more and more researches focus on e-service quality recently. The first definition of e-service quality is that service quality on the Internet is the extent to which a website facilitates efficient and effective shopping, purchasing, and delivery of products and services (Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Malhotra, 2000).

Loiacono, Watson, and Goodhue (2000) developed WebQual, a scale with 12 dimensions to improve the service quality of websites. However, this study generated information for website designers, rather than measuring service quality, so WebQual may be insufficient. Yoo and Donthu (2001) developed a scale called SITEQUAL to measure site quality on four dimensions. Since the data for developing and testing SITEQUAL were gathered from students who did not have to complete the purchasing process, it does not constitute a comprehensive assessment of a site’s service quality. By using an on-line survey, Wolfinbarger and Gilly (2003) developed a scale called eTailQ. This scale of e-service quality has four dimensions: Website design, reliability/fulfillment, privacy/security, and customer service.

Table 2.2 Practitioner Dimensions of E-Service Quality Source: Collier and Bienstock (2006)

Website Dimensions of E-Service Quality

E-Ratings

(www.consumerreports.org)

Credibility: privacy, security, customer service, and disclosure

Usability: design and navigation in the website

Content: accurate product information, personalization, and depth of categories

Functionality: accessibility, speed and bandwidth sensitivity, HTML quality, navigation and links, and legality

Design: graphic design, user friendliness, aesthetics, alignment, layout, and integration

Content: purpose, human interactivity, information process, verbal expression, and attention to detail Originality: creativity, distinctiveness, and vision Professionalism: customer service, values, and focus on message

Professionalism: customer service, values, and focus of message

Furthermore, Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Malhotra (2000, 2002) developed e-SERVQUAL for measuring e-service quality with seven dimensions, and they also split the dimensions into two separate scales in 2005. One of the scales is the core dimensions: efficiency, system availability, fulfillment, and privacy, which is named E-S-QUAL. The other scale is E-RecS-QUAL, responsiveness, compensation, and contact, focused on the recovery part. They thought that in on-line environments, gaps will exist between service expectations and perceptions, similar to the PZB model:

Information gap: The difference between customers’ requirements concerning a website and management’s beliefs about the requirements.

Design gap: The failure to fully incorporate knowledge about customer requirements into the structure and functioning of the website.

Communication gap: A lack of accurate understanding on the part of marketing personnel about a website’s features, capabilities, and limitations.

Fulfillment gap: The overall discrepancy between a customer’s requirements and experiences, and it is the only one occurring on the customer side. The overall fulfillment gap stems from a combination of the information, design, and communication gaps.

Collier and Bienstock (2006) measured service quality in E-Retailing and they developed a conceptual framework of e-service quality. This research focused not only on website interactivity or process quality but also on outcome quality and recovery quality. It consisted of three second-order dimensions and eleven first-order dimensions: privacy, design, information accuracy, ease of use, functionality, order timeliness, order accuracy, order condition, interactive fairness, procedural, and outcome fairness. In order to integrate both utilitarian and hedonic e-service quality elements, Bauer, Falk, and Hammerschmidt (2006) developed a transaction process-based scale for measuring service quality (eTransQual). The five dimensions in eTransQual are functional/design, enjoyment, process, reliability and responsiveness. The details are shown below (Table 2.3).

Table 2.3 Academic Dimensions of E-Service Quality

Study Dimensions Sample

WebQual

(Loiacono, Watson, and Goodhue, 2000)

Information fit to task, Trust, Design, Visual appeal, Flow, Business process, Interaction, Response time, Intuitiveness, Innovativeness, Integrated

Ease of use, Aesthetic design, Processing speed, Interactive responsiveness

Students

eTailQ

(Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2003)

Website design, Reliability, Customer service, Privacy

Core- Efficiency, System availability, Fulfillment, Privacy

Study Dimensions Sample E-Service Quality

(Collier and Bienstock, 2006)

Process quality- Ease of use, Privacy, Design, Information accuracy, Functionality

Outcome quality- Order timeliness, Order accuracy, Order condition

Recovery- Interactive fairness, Procedural fairness, Outcome fairness

Students

eTransQual (Bauer, Falk, and Hammerschmidt, 2006)

Functional/Design, Enjoyment, Process, Reliability,

Responsiveness On-line

shopper