Customer Heterogeneity in Operational E-Service Design Attributes: An Empirical Investigation of Service Quality

This study empirically examines whether heterogeneity in personal customer profiles translates to heterogeneity in the valued operational e-service design attributes. It focuses on a key operational e-service design attribute – web site quality – by investigating whether customers with different profiles (demographics, pattern of use of the service, and pattern of channel use) attach different levels of importance to different dimensions of web site quality. The study is based on triangulation of data collected from multiple sources in a real e-service setting (e-banking): data from an online survey of the customers of the e-service; data stored in the transaction and log files generated by the operation of the e-service over time; and data from the e-service provider’s customer database and back office IT systems. The results suggest that: i) customer demographics, pattern of service use, and pattern of channel use have no influence on the importance attached to web site quality dimensions; and ii) customer demographics affect the pattern of use of an e-service. The implications of the findings for e-service design are discussed.