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EL
33,3
468
Received 29 October 2013
Revised 1 January 2014
Accepted 17 February 2014
The Electronic Library
Vol. 33 No. 3, 2015
pp. 468-485
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-10-2013-0193
The effects of online service
quality of e-commerce Websites
on user satisfaction
Gajendra Sharma
School of Engineering, Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
Dhulikel, Kavre, Nepal, and
Wang Lijuan
Department of Marketing Management, Liaoning Technical University,
Huludao, China
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate service quality of e-commerce Websites in online
platform and their contribution on e-business promotion.
Design/methodology/approach – The online survey was performed on a survey portal provided by
Nepal Telecom in Nepal.
Findings – The findings of this study suggest that information quality and online service quality were
the key determinants for user satisfaction and sustainability of e-commerce technology.
Research limitations/implications – Research opportunities of web services and e-commerce area
are fruitful and important for both academics and practitioners.
Practical implications – The findings on online service quality of e-commerce technology will be
useful for current management practice such as making business policies and strategies and sharing
information to managers and organization leaders. This study can be used for e-commerce Website
operators wishing to enhance the competitiveness of their Websites in the highly competitive online
market.
Originality/value – E-commerce is considered an excellent alternative for individuals and companies
to reach new customers. Service quality delivery through Internet is an essential strategy to success,
more important than price and web presence. The e-commerce Website has been identified as having a
significant impact on business activities in solving the geographical problem. A number of performance
problems have been observed for e-commerce Websites, and much work has gone into characterizing
the performance of web-servers and Internet applications.
Keywords Satisfaction, Websites, Service quality, E-commerce
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
E-commerce refers to the conduct of business transactions or managerial activities
using the Internet. As e-commerce models and applications have been widely used in
The authors would like to thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), fund
number: 71202117, for providing support of this study. The authors would like to express
gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions that greatly
enhanced the manuscript quality. Many thanks to the editors of The Electronic Library for their
editing support.
today’s business environment, a new movement called dynamic e-business has Effects of
emerged to advance e-commerce applications by simplifying business interaction online service
over the web (Chen et al., 2003; Gajendra and Wang, 2013). Websites are useful tools
for using e-commerce activities. The first indicator of Website quality is official
quality
page rankings. If a ranking is low, the owners should pay more attention in their
efforts to analyze site quality and, after evaluation, proceed with changes to the
weak elements of the Website (Vida and Jonas, 2011). Successful e-commerce should 469
be supported by Website design which determines the ability of a business to reap
the benefits of online sales. The Website has been defined as the e-commerce
application of network systems that has become an important phenomenon over the
past decade (Zwass, 2003). The service quality model of an e-commerce Website has
posed different problems as a measure for quality (Myerscough, 2008; Alzola and
Robaina, 2010). DeLone and McLean’s (2003) studies found quality to be a measure
of success. E-commerce is growing rapidly and provides an excellent opportunity
for businesses. Multinational companies should identify with the possible effects of
cultural context on consumer attitudes of e-seller loyalty before generating
marketing strategies (Lu et al., 2013). A customer’s intention to maintain a
relationship with a company is dependent on his or her perception of the benefits of
high-quality service that provides a continuous flow of value (Patterson et al., 2006).
Tan et al. (2007) claimed that the conceptualization of service quality should include
considerations of both service satisfaction and delivery. Websites with a more
visually acceptable interface often result in greater service quality and can influence
a user’s experience and ultimately his or her long-term service provider relationship.
Service quality refers to how good the service supplied by an information service
provider is, in terms of the internal organization, external provider and a third party.
Website evaluation has been widely studied in previous literature. Trust makes
consumers comfortable in sharing personal information and making purchases, and it
establishes customer loyalty. E-loyalty intention offers the dependence and
identification of the products or services of a Website (Chiu et al., 2009). Lee and Kozar
(2006) evaluated online electronics and online travel Websites by adopting DeLone and
McLean’s (2004) information systems’ (IS) success model and applying the analytic
hierarchy process method. Qin et al. (2008) used six dimensions for analysis of the degree
of consumer satisfaction using e-services:
(1) quality of service;
(2) customer service;
(3) management of processes;
(4) ease of use;
(5) the quality of information; and
(6) design of the Website.

Website features provide a medium for functionalities which are able to convey
messages from text-based to multimedia, providing a richness of product information
and responsiveness to the customer. User-oriented design has continuously been the
crucial consideration for quality of e-commerce Websites (Gajendra and Wang, 2013;
Stefani and Xenos, 2008). Multimedia interactive formats can provide site richness and
should utilize the frame to access multiple pages simultaneously (Palmer, 2002), as the
EL Website has been identified as a market space which creates innovative ways for
33,3 companies to conduct business and interact with customers (Teo and Pian, 2004). Lee
and Park (2009) categorized online services into six groups: mass, professional,
intellectual, credit, supporting services and facility services. They examined the
distinctive features of each group and recommended strategies for marketing and
operations.
470 Eduard et al. (2007) investigated perceived quality which is a multidimensional
construct of Website design, customer service, assurance and order management. They
also stated that perceived quality influences satisfaction and satisfaction influences
consumer loyalty. The majority of relevant studies about perceived quality on the
Internet have focused on Web design aspects. A number of performance problems in
e-commerce have been observed, due to heavier-than-anticipated loads and the inability
to satisfy customer needs. This has resulted in studies attempting to characterize the
performance of Web servers and Internet applications. It was reported that poor
usability of Websites leads to a poor corporate image. The service quality of e-commerce
Websites has significant effects on user satisfaction. Customers who have experienced a
high level of service will visit that e-commerce Website repeatedly, and the financial
success of these companies will be enhanced by high service quality (Kim and Lee, 2002;
Fang and Holsapple, 2007). Business individuals need to focus on the users’
perceptions by improving site security to maintain long-term customer
relationships. Customers depend on the Internet for gathering product information,
as well as for electronic purchases, and become loyal to an organization or a
particular brand of product that is of interest to them (Yakov et al., 2005). Customer
satisfaction is a predecessor of service quality. Some studies mentioned that it is
service quality that provides customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions (Chia
et al., 2008; Molinari et al., 2008).
The purpose of this paper is to investigate service quality of e-commerce
Websites in online platforms and their contribution to e-business promotion. It has
been stated further that the quality of e-commerce Websites plays a crucial role in
customers’ re-purchase intentions (Zamzuri et al., 2008). Hence, to achieve repeated
leadership in the online market, it is important to ensure the software quality of
e-commerce systems. The investments in terms of time and capital that are often
required to initiate a commercial Website and the growing demands to observe
returns on Internet-related investments, as well as a stronger focus on performance
and success, are not trivial for Web-based e-commerce. From the perspective of
the customers, “their expectations need to be met and their interaction with the
website has to be a positive experience, in order for the website to be considered
successful” (Schaupp et al., 2006, p. 2). Analyzing the click stream data from the
traffic on the Website is the foremost way to make inferences regarding a site’s
effectiveness (Belanger et al., 2006; Schaupp et al., 2006). Researchers from various
disciplines have studied e-commerce success from different perspectives in a variety
of contexts (Hong, 2007; Huizingh et al., 2007; Gajendra and Wang, 2013; Schaupp
et al., 2006). Websites with a specific set of features are created to attract users for
the purpose of exchanging values. In addition, online users voluntarily visit the site,
and the site’s organization responds to their queries and communicates based on a
set of quality factors for a positive customer experience.
Conceptual framework and hypotheses development Effects of
Based upon the literature review, a conceptual framework has been developed in Figure 1. online service
The model shows that e-commerce Website use, acting as a dependent variable, is
directly linked to information quality, e-service quality and usefulness. E-satisfaction
quality
acts as an independent variable on e-commerce Website use. Similarly, trust acts as an
independent variable with reference to e-satisfaction. Critical theory has a valuable
contribution to make to e-commerce trust research and has a contribution to make to this 471
research, although a very different sort of contribution to what positive trust researchers
are used to and expect. Critical theory is able to shed light on the mechanisms that lead
to this particular approach and the way it sustains itself.

Information quality and e-commerce Website use

Information quality refers to e-commerce content issues and covers the completeness,
accuracy, format and currency aspects of information delivered by e-commerce
marketplaces (Wixom and Todd, 2005). It measures the desired characteristics of an
e-commerce Website. Generally, it also covers the reliability, flexibility, integration,
accessibility and timeliness of an e-commerce system. Online information quality of
e-commerce Websites can be viewed from several perspectives, such as product quality,
systems as product, service quality of provider, software product quality, system
design, quality of the human-computer interaction and more. Website quality is seen as
a necessary measure for success, when assessing and evaluating Website use (Kuo and
Chen, 2011). Laudon and Traver (2007) built upon the systems’ development life cycle to
define the e-commerce Website development process. They defined five phases in the
process: systems analysis/planning, systems design, building the system, testing and
implementation service delivery. Based on the above argument, the following
hypothesis can be developed:
H1. Information quality positively influences e-commerce Website use in an online
platform.

E-service quality and e-commerce Website use

E-service quality measures the overall support delivered by online providers regardless
of whether the support is delivered by the IS department, a new organizational unit or is
outsourced to an Internet service provider (DeLone and McLean, 2004). The service
quality in e-commerce is different from the traditionally studied service quality in IS
research which focuses on the services in organizations (Balasubramanian et al., 2003).
Pavlou et al. (2007) confirmed that e-commerce Website characteristics, such as

Figure 1.
Conceptual
framework
EL information security concerns and information privacy concerns, influence users’
33,3 perceptions of the uncertainty of their relationship with online service providers.
Therefore, it is reasonable to argue that sellers are likely to have high-quality
relationships with an online marketplace with high information and system qualities
and good services. Bauer et al. (2006) developed a transaction process-based model scale
for measuring service quality in e-commerce. Sun and Lina (2009) evaluated quality of
472 e-commerce Websites. According to an analysis from the Eastern Integrated Consumer
Profile (2008), the quality of the Website design is a very important factor in affecting the
consumer’s online shopping behavior. To increase market share in the face of high
competition, every aspect of the services offered on Websites must be improved. The
quality of Website service is related to product promotion, an efficient and rewarding
shopping experience and reliable product or service delivery. The quality of the Website
service is defined by the consumers’ feelings about the level of service while browsing
the Website, placing an order, making a payment or otherwise interacting with the
online store (Lin and Lin, 2006; Vida and Jonas, 2011). Hence, the following hypothesis
was developed based on the above mentioned arguments and explanations:
H2. E-service quality directly influences the use of e-commerce Websites.

Usefulness and e-commerce Website use

Operators of e-commerce Websites should not focus only on pricing strategies to
enhance competitiveness. It is more important to maintain a high level of quality as well
as usefulness. Quality includes a relatively easy to remember Web address;
well-organized, well-structured and easy-to-follow catalogues; site navigability; and
concise and understandable contents, terms and conditions. Besides the search engine, a
good Website user interface should provide other functions which not only draw
consumer attention but also simplify the purchasing process. Improving the quality of
Website services to meet customer needs has been the key to success when it comes to
e-commerce Websites (Kuo and Chen, 2011). However, it is impossible to actually
improve Website quality if the needs of Internet consumers cannot be understood.
Structural assurance and information quality are the main factors affecting initial trust
on e-commerce Websites, whereas information and system quality significantly affects
perceived usefulness (Zhou, 2011). To make a successful e-commerce Website, online
stores should actively seek ways to improve their Websites (Liu and Arnett, 2000; Flores
and Volle, 2005). It was also shown that the factors affecting user satisfaction of
Websites included control, efficiency and helpfulness, which is indicated by the ease for
the user to navigate through the Website to find the information they need at a
reasonable speed and the offering of assistance for finding information and navigating.
Thus, we propose the following hypothesis:
H3. Usefulness positively and directly influences e-commerce Website use in online
systems.

E-satisfaction and e-commerce Website use

The factors that influence consumer purchase behaviors online include the
characteristics of the customers, the characteristics of the products sold, the design of
the online store’s Website and the characteristics of the Internet (Yu et al., 2008;
Bracewell et al., 2008). Chang (2008) reported that an annual survey of retail consumers
disclosed that, although the key driving force behind online consumption is price, the Effects of
ease-of-use of the interface is the prominent factor that decides whether consumers will online service
proceed to the enquiry stage. Palmer (2002) found that as long as retail companies
provide reasonable prices (not necessarily the lowest prices), an easy-to-use user
quality
interface and good customer service, customers will choose to return to the same
Website to purchase more items because of the satisfying online experience.
Furthermore, the user interface, which has a large influence on the visitors’ first 473
impressions, is the key factor that determines whether consumers will continue to
purchase (Wu, 2006; Gajendra and Wang, 2013). A Website can not only strengthen the
consumer’s intention to purchase but also draw attention to it from the wide variety of
other options available. Information quality, system quality and service quality are
crucial factors to evaluate e-commerce Websites. Torkzadeh and Dhillon (2002)
developed means and fundamental objectives that influence e-commerce success. Van
der Merwe and Bekker (2003) developed a methodology for evaluating e-commerce
Websites and focused on communication with customers and facilitation of business
transactions. Benbunan-Fich (2001) used a systematic qualitative technique to evaluate
the usability of commercial Websites. Kaya (2010) developed a fuzzy hybrid model to
assess e-commerce Websites. Organizations use e-commerce Websites to reach target
customers. Issues such as negative publicity and suspect behaviors violate consumer
expectations and ruin corporate images (Xie and Peng, 2009).
Lightner (2004) evaluated e-commerce Websites and focused on customer
satisfaction. If a Website could provide sufficient information to consumers, it should be
able to encourage people to shop online (EICP, 2008; Román, 2010). In terms of providing
sufficient information, providing customers the opportunity for a more direct experience
should be much more effective than simply bragging. According to an analysis of
Internet shopping behaviour, many consumers feel that online information can be used
as a reference before making purchase decisions. In other words, even those who do not
purchase anything online still look at product information on the Internet. This shows
the importance of online information and references (Yang, 2008; Li and Yang, 2009;
Kim et al., 2012). E-satisfaction affects consumer confidence, and this leads to repeat
purchase behaviour. The user satisfaction in the e-commerce and Website context
describes feelings as well as attitudes and expectations of users who perceive that they
have received good service using an e-commerce application and are likely to visit and
purchase again. It is critical that the Website is user-friendly and helps users to obtain
desired results effortlessly. The quality of a user’s experience and a user’s satisfaction
with the Website have been used in recent research as determinants of success
(Aladwani and Prashant, 2002; Ranganathan and Shobha, 2002). From the
organizational perspective, success is measured by the Website’s ability to attract
qualified customers who will aid the firm to achieve its stated goal. Thus, this research
proposes the following hypothesis:
H4. E-satisfaction directly influences e-commerce Website use in online networks.

Trust and e-satisfaction

Trust is a psychological phenomenon and dispositional elements are highly effective in
determining the trustor’s willingness to accept vulnerability (Dirks et al., 2011).
Tomlinson and Mayer (2009) stated that positive outcome reinforces trusting beliefs,
whereas trust level turns back when the trustor experiences negative outcomes.
EL Non-deception refers to the consumer belief that an e-commerce Website will not use
33,3 deceptive practices to influence consumers to purchase e-products (Limbu et al., 2011).
Vasalou et al. (2008) examined the cause of trust decline and argued that people tend to
weigh dishonest behavior more seriously than positive behavior. Conchie et al. (2011)
examined how distrust links to acts such as dishonesty and malevolence. When
consumers perceive that risks to security, privacy, fraud or reliability are low, their
474 perceptions of expected benefits increase, thereby increasing their desire to repurchase
from the e-commerce Websites that provide satisfaction (Román, 2010; Yang et al., 2009).
Trust management has been taken as one of the most important elements in online
platforms. Loyal online customers are highly profitable for e-commerce service
providers. A useful way to understand consumers’ orientation toward e-service
providers is by investigating their loyalty tendencies (Arjoon and Rambocas, 2011).
Trust is the basis for forging satisfaction and maintaining long-term e-commerce
relationships (Walczuch and Lundgren, 2004; Kim et al., 2012). Therefore, we propose
the following hypothesis:
H5. Trust with e-commerce Websites significantly affects e-satisfaction.

Methodology and results

Data collection
To test the hypotheses, this study relied on five sets of constructs and their indicators.
All indicators were derived from the items in a survey questionnaire designed with a
seven-point scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). The items were
validated in prior studies and used with minor modifications to apply to online service
quality in an e-commerce Website context. The online survey questionnaire was
performed on a survey portal provided by Nepal Telecom in Nepal, where interested
online users could connect to the portal. Participants completing the survey received a
gift card equivalent to Nepalese Rupee 1,000. Out of the 549 questionnaires returned, 43
were incomplete and discarded from the analysis. A total of 506 questionnaires were
analyzed using SPSS 16.0 and AMOS 7.0. Out of the participants, 63.4 per cent of them
were business workers and 8.2 per cent were students, and 68.3 per cent were males.
About 79 per cent were aged between 20 and 40 years with only 1.7 per cent aged above
50 years. Most respondents (79.0 per cent) had at least a college degree, and most
respondents (53.5 per cent) shopped online 1-5 times in 2012, with 23.4 per cent shopping
online 6-10 times.

Research constructs and items

Each construct of online service quality in e-commerce Websites had 3-4 items. The total
number of measurement items was 21. Information quality (IQ) was measured by three
items, e-service quality (ESQ) by four items, usefulness (USE) by three items and
e-commerce Website use (ECW) by four items. Similarly, e-satisfaction (ESAT) was
measured by three items and trust (TR) by four items. The survey items ESQ3 and TR2
were deleted due to lower factor loading, below 0.6. The maximum likelihood method
used in this study can be deployed for the data with minor deviations from normality,
even when the data are deviating moderately from a normal distribution (Chou and
Bentler, 1995). A simple check of normality, i.e. the univariate skewness and kurtosis, for
all items in the sample was done and ranged from ⫺1.534 (ESQ2) to ⫺0.521 (ECW4) for
skewness and from ⫺0.393 (IQ3) to 2.693 (ESQ1) for kurtosis. These fall within the
maximum limits of an absolute value of two for skewness and seven for kurtosis as Effects of
recommended by West et al. (1995). The results indicated that the variance of inflation online service
factors ranged from 3.152 (ESQ3) to 4.724 (TR3), and did not exceed the recommended
threshold of 10 (Kline, 2005; Kutner et al., 2005). All variables were kept for further
quality
analysis. For comparisons, the summed scores for the four ECW dimensions were used
as indicators of online service quality for assessing their relative importance
(Parasuraman et al., 2005). 475
Analysis of measurement model
A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to assess the goodness-of-fit of the
measurement model, which considered three online quality constructs as predictor
variables, e-commerce Website use construct as the mediating variable and the
e-satisfaction construct as the independent variable to ECW and dependant variable to
TR. Although the items used as the indicators to measure their respective constructs in
this study were based on the related literature review, the test of reliability and validity
(convergent validity and discriminant validity) were important for establishing
construct validity (Ahire et al., 1996; Tu et al., 2001). Anderson and Gerbing’s (1988)
recommendations were followed first in evaluating and then in refining the
measurement model prior to the simultaneous estimation of the measurement and
structural equation models.

Reliability and validity

Using AMOS 7.0, the measurement model was assessed and refined according to the
modification indices, allowing some pairs of error terms to have non-zero covariance.
The measurement model fit showed that all goodness-of-fit indices, such as the ratio
␹2/df ⫽ 3.228, GFI ⫽ 0.932, AGFI ⫽ 0.921, CFI ⫽ 0.960, NFI ⫽ 0.957, TLI ⫽ 0.963 and
RMSEA ⫽ 0.058, met the generally recommended threshold levels. The results revealed
that all standardized factor loadings ranged from 0.632 (IQ3) to 0.887 (ESAT1), and each
individual item’s coefficient was statistically significant at p ⬍ 0.000 and greater than
twice its standard error, reflecting that the items represent their corresponding
underlying constructs. The composite reliability values, weighted by factor loadings,
ranging from 0.813 (IQ) to 0.933 (TR), exceeded the often used practical level of 0.70,
indicating an acceptable internal consistency for each construct (Hair et al., 2006;
Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994). The variance-extracted estimates, ranging from 0.629
(ESQ) to 0.824 (ESAT), exceeded the 0.50 lower limit (Hair et al., 2006; Fornell and
Larcker, 1981). All the three evidences supported the convergent validity of the items as
measures of their constructs.
The chi-square difference test and confidence interval test were conducted to
examine the discriminant validity of the constructs in the model (Anderson and
Gerbing, 1988). Each possible pair of constructs by constraining the estimated
correlation parameter between them to 1.0 in the model (called a constrained model) was
assessed. All the differences in ␹2 values for the fixed and free solutions, as shown in
Table I, were significant at p ⬍ 0.000, indicating the existence of discriminant validity of
any two constructs. However, this is a necessary condition. A complementary method,
i.e. confidence interval test, was also used to assess the discriminant validity. The
confidence interval (⫾ two standard errors) around the correlation estimate between
any two constructs did not include 1.0; thus, the discriminant validity is evidenced
EL (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988). The results of the CFA model suggest a high statistical
33,3 measurement quality associated with the five constructs.

Common method bias

Harman’s one-factor test was used to assess the existence of the influence of common
method bias. The one-factor model that yielded a ␹2 (104) ⫽ 1857.21 compared with the
476 ␹2 (95) ⫽ 323.261 for the measurement model resulted in a considerably worse result
(p ⬍ 0.000) for the one-factor model than for the measurement model, indicating no
serious common method bias threatening the analysis and interpretation of the data.

Analysis of the structural model

The structural equation model was tested using AMOS 7.0. The model fit indices
showed that the ratio ␹2/df ⫽ 3.456, GFI ⫽ 0.931, AGFI ⫽ 0.920, CFI ⫽ 0.958, NFI ⫽
0.955, TLI ⫽ 0.962 and RMSEA ⫽ 0.056, met the generally recommended threshold
levels, suggesting that the proposed model fits the data very well as shown in Table II.
The factor loadings and the hypothesized relationships among the constructs were
tested using their associated t-statistics. The t-values ⬎ 1.96, 2.58, and 3.29 were
considered to be significant at the 0.05, 0.01, and 0.001 levels, respectively. The results
reveal that all the indicators have significant loadings (0.742-0.944, all p’s ⬍ 0.001), as
given in Table III, to their corresponding construct, implying that 54.7-88.5 per cent of
the variance (R2) for indicators can be explained by their corresponding construct.
Table IV presents the estimated path coefficients of the structural equation model
and the squared multiple correlations for dependent latent constructs IQ, ESQ and USE,
as well as the results of the five hypothesized relationships among the study constructs.

Structural measurement model ␹2(95) ⫽ 134.246

Construct pairs Constrained model ␹2(96) o ␹2(1)*

IQ ↔ ECW 368.61 50.33

ESQ ↔ ECW 667.32 340.22
USE ↔ ECW 402.76 234.89
ESAT ↔ ECW 348.48 66.74
Table I. TR ↔ ESAT 563.90 268.28
Chi-square difference
test Note: * All chi-square differences are significant at p ⬍ 0.000

Fit measures Values

Chi-square 262
RMR 0.47
RMSEA 0.056
GFI 0.931
CFI 0.958
AGFI 0.920
Table II. NFI 0.955
Goodness-of-fit
measures Note: Comparative fit index (CFI), cut-off ⬎ 0.90
Path R2 Loading Standard error t-value*
Effects of
online service
IQ1 0.710 0.897 0.022 43.832 quality
IQ2 0.657 0.910 0.018 36.120
IQ3 0.769 0.876 0.012 33.887
ESQ1 0.745 0.818 0.021 52.855
ESQ2 0.647 0.742 0.011 71.690
ESQ4 0.655 0.944 0.008 42.320
477
USE1 0.801 0.827 0.014 33.123
USE2 0.547 0.830 0.015 44.112
USE3 0.710 0.797 0.010 36.801
ECW1 0.801 0.808 0.019 64.102
ECW2 0.697 0.930 0.012 60.100
ECW3 0.726 0.854 0.009 54.758
ECW4 0.637 0.902 0.016 59.289
ESAT1 0.885 0.787 0.023 101.129
ESAT2 0.678 0.819 0.018 73.488
ESAT3 0.710 0.920 0.013 45.876
TR1 0.651 0.809 0.019 38.430
TR3 0.842 0.900 0.020 41.110
TR4 0.711 0.893 0.018 48.450 Table III.
Factor loading and
Note: * p ⬍ 0.001 R2

Hypothesis t-statistic Path coefficient Support

H1. IQ ¡ ECW 19.62** 0.38 Supported

H2. ESQ ¡ ECW 9.12** 0.75 Supported
H3. USE ¡ ECW 11.40** 0.37 Supported
H4. ESAT ¡ ECW 1.12*** 0.21 Not supported
H5. TR ¡ ESAT 2.36* 0.49 Supported Table IV.
Hypothesis test
Notes: * p ⬍ 0.05; ** p ⬍ 0.001; *** p ⬎ 0.10 results

Four out of the five hypothesized relationships were found to be significant, of which the
path coefficient from ECW to IQ was very large with p ⬍ 0.000 and H1 was supported.
Among the quality dimensions, H2 and H3 were found to be significant at the 0.01 level
and were supported. However, H4 predicts a positive path from ESAT to ECW use and
was not significant and not supported. H5 was found to be significant at the 0.01 level
and was supported.
The relative importance of the quality dimensions can be assessed by their loadings
to their corresponding construct.

Discussion
A well-developed e-commerce Website not only adds to the value of the product or
service being offered but also enhances the worth of the corporation. Therefore, it is
important that a company choose the correct development strategy to obtain the
greatest return on its investment. The diversity of e-commerce models and applications,
EL which vary in size from small stores to global exchanges, requires a variety of
33,3 development methodologies and approaches. E-commerce applications, like all other
information systems, are usually built to enable one or more business processes.
Consequently, their planning must be aligned with that of the organization’s overall
business plan and the specific processes involved. Because of their cost and complexity,
e-commerce sites need to be developed in a systematic manner. The development of an
478 e-commerce site should proceed in steps. First, an e-commerce application portfolio is
defined based on an organization’s strategy. Second, the e-commerce architecture is
created. Next, a decision is made whether to build, buy or outsource the development.
Third, the system is installed, tested and deployed. Finally, the system goes into
maintenance mode, with continual changes being made to ensure the system’s
continuing success. With service-oriented architecture and Web services, functions
within e-commerce applications such as order-taking and billing can be automatically
invoked and executed anywhere in the world based on business rules. Website usage
patterns can be useful for analyzing and improving business strategies.
There are some key issues involved with online service quality of e-commerce
Websites. The first issue is the need to develop user-friendly e-commerce Websites with
easy consumer purchasing and searching, thus creating a suitable framework for the
generation of higher satisfaction and loyalty levels. Second, the Website manager
should enhance service quality, customer sensitivity, personalized service and quick
responses to complaints. Third, the Website should uphold sufficient security levels in
communications and meet data protection requirements regarding privacy. Finally, the
need for correct product delivery and product manipulation or service is recommended.
E-commerce Websites, as well as services, are used to support application-
to-application communication and to address interoperability issues for systems
integration projects. These Web services provide a standards-based approach for
different components involved in supporting real-time information retrieval or
presenting dynamic context-driven information to the user.
Web quality is a useful diagnostic tool for assessing the perceived quality of an
organization’s e-commerce operation. The iterative process of development and
integration of the literature has helped to build a degree of external validity in the
instrument. It is particularly powerful when used to provide a benchmark against
competitor organizations and can also be applied longitudinally to evaluate the impact
of e-commerce development activities. However, despite providing a valuable profile of
e-commerce quality, online service quality does not provide prescriptive advice
concerning how an organization might improve its e-commerce offering. It is unlikely
that excellent Website design and judicious use of new technology will increase the
perception of trust by customers, as trust is affected by external factors, such as the
strength of the brand, the customer’s previous experiences and the whole range of
communications generated by the brand-owner, the media and word-of-mouth (Conchie
et al., 2011). Organizations with successful e-commerce offerings may tend to be mature
users who have embraced the Internet enthusiastically rather than as a bolt-on addition
to their current organizational form, i.e. the organization pursued advanced levels of
process integration. The security factor was considered the most important. It indicates
that, in e-commerce Websites, security is fundamental, especially when it comes to
electronic payments, which cannot be vulnerable to any kind of attack, and when it
comes to the subject of site authentication itself. An e-commerce Website has to manage Effects of
and control its stored data correctly and appropriately. online service
quality
Theoretical and practical implications
Theoretically, this study extends measurement scales of traditional service quality to
online service quality. Parasuraman et al. (1988) developed SERVQUAL to assess
service quality in traditional markets. As online markets emerged, both researchers and
479
practitioners have called for a set of reliable and valid service quality measurements in
e-commerce. The online service quality measure developed in this study is designed to
provide an effective tool to measure Internet-based service quality. This study may
assist business managers to assess their e-commerce initiatives, as well as to identify
measures for the performance of their e-commerce Website. Such measures help
managers to not only allocate resources as they develop their e-commerce strategy but
also to evaluate impacts on profitability. The absence of face-to-face interactions
between buyer and seller, and the resulting non-verbal cues, can be compensated by
other factors, such as product information, as buyers can only attend to the
characteristics of the message being sent to them, quality factors, such as interactivity
functionalities, to make customers feel that they are part of the process and
functionalities assisting customers to find and select products. By understanding the
unique characteristics of each service group, managers can implement more suitable
strategies, promote more positive attitudes toward online transactions and increase
online buying intentions. From a managerial point of view, this study shows businesses
with e-commerce Websites how to integrate the specific dimensions of their activity into
their evaluations.
Information quality has significant impacts on customers’ perceived relationship
quality but with a lower path coefficient than that of service quality. Providing
complete, accurate, updated and well-formatted information is thus important for
maintaining good relationships with customers. Findings from this research also have
practical implications. First, user satisfaction is significant in influencing customer
retention. Promoting customer trust is thus important in e-commerce. Second,
information quality is confirmed to be an important factor in promoting customer
commitment and, thus, should receive sufficient attention from practitioners. Third,
providing high-quality services and usefulness is an effective way to maintain
high-quality relationships with customers. System quality, on the other hand, does not
contribute to customers’ perceptions of their relationships with the marketplace.
Practitioners should therefore focus on providing high-quality services and information
instead.

Limitations and future research directions

There are some limitations in this study. The participants in this study may possess
attributes and behaviors that differ from those in other parts of the world. In addition,
the sample is skewed to a particular gender with 68 per cent of the respondents being
male, which may not exactly reflect the current composite of online customers. In
addition, it was impossible to send follow-up surveys and, thus, no attempt was made to
ascertain the existence of non-response bias by comparing responses from the
first-round surveys with a second-phase investigation.
EL Future research could make several extensions of the current study. First, to verify
33,3 the dimensions developed in this study and to enhance the generalizability of the
research findings, future inquiries could employ more diversified samples across
genders and include various forms of e-businesses. Second, the measurement
instrument constructed in this study can be used to further investigate how
user-perceived online service quality influences user satisfaction and, in turn,
480 purchasing behaviors, such as customer repurchase intentions and loyalty. Similarly,
the antecedents of customer-perceived e-commerce service quality may also be
examined using the measure. Finally, as the e-commerce field becomes increasingly
mature, customers will shape clear expectations for online service quality attributes.
More and more industry-wide service standards will be provided and should aim to be
accepted. Thus, future studies may utilize the expectation– disconfirmation paradigm to
measure online service quality and customer satisfaction.

Conclusions
E-commerce Websites and services can collectively regulate the communication of
applications to connect online systems, business partners and customers
cost-effectively through the Internet. The emerging Web services standards and
technologies enable individuals and companies to provide multiple functions and
e-business services over the Web to be integrated by internal business processes or with
trading partners. Web services will change the way businesses design their applications
to service, integrate with other business entities, manage business process workflows
and conduct e-business transactions. Research opportunities investigating Web
services and e-commerce are fruitful and important for both academics and
practitioners. The primary significance of this study is the conceptualization of
e-commerce Website effectiveness for user satisfaction. However, e-commerce Website
performance seems to be a concept that cannot be captured in a single measure, but
should be treated as a multidimensional phenomenon. The limitation of the prior work
was that the literature in these fields confined discussions within the online consumers’
perspective as evaluators. The assessment was made on e-commerce Websites with the
view of the systems as the product. The quality of e-commerce Websites is an important
factor in attracting potential consumers, encouraging first-time purchases and retaining
repeat purchases. It has been emphasized that the quality of electronic commerce
Websites is an important component for consumers in selecting the most preferred
Website that ultimately results in more revenue for the service providers. Our
consideration for future research areas could be to validate the elements of quality from
the various perspectives.

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About the authors

Gajendra Sharma has completed his PhD in Management Information System from Harbin
Institute of Technology, China, at the Department of Management Science and Engineering. He
485
received the degree of Masters of Engineering in Electronics and Communication in 1997 from
Moscow University of Telecommunication and Informatics, Russia. During the following years,
he was employed in different organizations in Nepal as a Professional Engineer. He had also
worked in a managerial and academic position in different companies and engineering
institutions. He served as a Chief of Engineering Campus in Nepal for three years from 2005 to
2008. He has been engaged in academic activities since more than 10 years. His research and
teaching interest is focused on e-commerce including e-marketing, online social networks and
e-governance. In the meantime, He has been working in Liaoning Technical University, China, as
a Professor since September 2011. Gajendra Sharma is the corresponding author and can be
contacted at: gsh106@gmail.com
Wang Lijuan has completed her PhD in Marketing Management in 2010 from Shanghai
University of Finance and Economics, China. She was employed in Taiyuan University of Science
and Technology from 2005 to 2010. She received the degree of Master of Management in 2005 from
Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. Her research and teaching interest is focused on Internet
consumer behavior and Chinese rural marketing. In the meantime, She has been working in
Liaoning Technical University, China, as an Associate Professor since January 2011.

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