E-Service Quality and its Impact on Customer Satisfaction and Trust: An Empirical Study on Greek Customers of Internet Shops

The use of Internet as a mean of shopping goods and services is growing over the past decade. Businesses in the e-commerce sector realize that the key factors for success are not limited to the existence of a website and low prices but must also include high standards of e-quality. Research indicates that the attainment of customer satisfaction brings along plenty of benefits. Furthermore, trust is of paramount importance, in ecommerce, due to the fact that that its establishment can diminish the perceived risk of using an internet service. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of customer perceived quality of an internet shop on customers’ satisfaction and trust. In addition, the possible effect of customer satisfaction on trust is also examined. An explanatory research approach was adopted in order to identify causal relationships between e-quality, customer satisfaction and trust. This was accomplished through field research by utilizing an interviewer-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire was largely based on existing constructs in relative literature. E-quality was divided into 5 dimensions, namely ease of use, e-scape, customization, responsiveness, and assurance. After being successfully pilot-tested by the managers of 3 Greek companies developing ecommerce software, 4 managers of Greek internet shops and 5 internet shoppers, the questionnaire was distributed to internet shoppers in central Greece. This process had as a result a total of 171 correctly answered questionnaires. Reliability tests and statistical analyses were performed to both confirm scale reliability and test research hypotheses. The findings indicate that all the examined e-quality dimensions expose a significant positive influence on customer satisfaction, with ease of use, e-scape and assurance being the most important ones. One the other hand, rather surprisingly, the only e-quality dimension that proved to have a significant positive impact on trust was customization. Finally, satisfaction was revealed to have a significant positive relation with trust.