E-service quality: development of a hierarchical model

Markus Blut

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Using survey data from 358 online customers, the study finds that the e-service quality construct conforms to the structure of a third-order factor model that links online service quality perceptions to distinct and actionable dimensions, including (1) website design, (2) fulfilment, (3) customer service, and (4) security/privacy. Each dimension is found to consist of several attributes that define the basis of e-service quality perceptions. A comprehensive specification of the construct, which includes attributes not covered in existing scales, is developed. The study contrasts a formative model consisting of 4 dimensions and 16 attributes against a reflective conceptualization. The results of this comparison indicate that studies using an incorrectly specified model overestimate the importance of certain e-service quality attributes. Global fit criteria are also found to support the detection of measurement misspecification. Meta-analytic data from 31,264 online customers are used to show that the developed measurement predicts customer behavior better than widely used scales, such as WebQual and E-S-Qual. The results show that the new measurement enables managers to assess e-service quality more accurately and predict customer behavior more reliably.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)500-517
JournalJournal of Retailing
Volume92
Issue number4
Early online date20 Sept 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2016

Bibliographical note

© 2016, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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