An examination of the effects of service quality and satisfaction on customers’ behavioral intentions in e-shopping

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of service quality and satisfaction on three consumer behavioral intentions, namely word-of-mouth, site revisit, and purchase intentions in the context of internet shopping. To achieve this objective 240 online interviews were carried out (response rate 24 percent) from a randomly generated sample of 1,052 online shoppers using the database of a leading Internet provider in Greece as the sample frame. Data analysis involved the comparison of three rival models using structural equations modeling. The prevailed model reveals that e-service quality has a positive effect on e-satisfaction, while it also influences, both directly and indirectly through e-satisfaction, the consumer's behavioral intentions, namely site revisit, word-of-mouth communication and repeat purchase. The results confirm that cognitive evaluations precede emotional responses and that quality is a strong antecedent of satisfaction. However, the findings highlight the importance of the interaction experience with the e-shop on perceived quality. Moreover, the study underlines the crucial impact of the four key e-service quality drivers on the entire cycle of buying, including post-purchase behavior, confirming existing evidence in both off- and on-line context. Practitioners should carefully consider their web site's attributes. They should make their sites easy-to-use and easy-to-navigate and place extra emphasis on providing fast, accurate, and uncluttered information through their web sites. Also they should direct marketing activities with the aim to enhance satisfaction from e-shopping, particularly regarding the service encounter incidents. The paper makes a scholar contribution by examining the notion of e-service quality and how it relates with e-satisfaction while exploring unexamined consumers' behavioral intentions and both their direct and indirect antecedents.