Factors Affecting Consumer Satisfaction of Online Purchase

Consumers frequently engage in pre-purchase search to extract up-to-date information for their purchase decisions. Search is an essential part of online comparison-shopping and decision-making process as it reduces purchase related uncertainty and increases the likelihood of purchase satisfaction. In this paper, we study how determinants of prepurchase search, purchase related uncertainty and the type of the search process, influence consumers’ perceived satisfaction with the online purchase. Our analysis of 351 consumers show that the classic determinants such as product class knowledge, time availability, attitudes toward shopping, and search effort do not significantly affect perceived purchase satisfaction. Instead, we find that involvement and purchase related uncertainties have stronger effect on satisfaction. However, the type of the search process turned out to be the most important factor behind perceived purchase satisfaction.