Old Theory and New Service Quality: An Exploratory Study of the Nature and Nomological Net of Online Service Quality and Continuing Use using Information Systems Theory

The quality of online services is a research area at the intersection of marketing and information systems. Traditionally, it is rooted in ideas about service quality of non-virtual service interactions that have been adopted from the marketing literature. However, as Information Systems researchers adapt the concepts and measures to fit virtual, or online, services, they frequently encounter difficulties both with the conceptualisation and with the measurements. In this paper, we remind the community that online services are also information systems, and receivers of these services are system users. Hence, we suggest that established "old" IS-centric theories such as continuance and self-efficacy can play a role in explaining users' perceptions of these "new" types of online services. We present an initial qualitative study that demonstrates the plausibility of this perspective and its potential explanatory value.