Abstract

Online service quality is of high importance to the overall user experience within ecommerce platforms. The website service quality is considered to be a good predictor of customers’ brand loyalty intents. In this study four attributes of the electronic retailing service quality [website design, reliability/fulfillment, security/privacy and customer service] are studied based on the implications each one of them has towards brand loyalty [being measured through intentions to repurchase from the same brand on upcoming occasions and customer incentives to pay a price premium for the brand]. The paper aims to study this process in two contexts, when respondents are faced with a local vs global brand. The data collection is conducted through two focus groups. Considering that the study aims to measure perceptions, and knowing that the best way to express them is through linguistic terms, which is the way humans express their feelings on daily basis, the analysis is based on fuzzy logic. The analysis suggests that when customers are faced with global brands, service quality elements such as website design, customer service and reliability/fulfillment are good predictors for the creation of behavioral intents towards the brand. Whereas when customers faced with local brands, service quality elements such as security/privacy, reliability/fulfillment and website design, have high implications towards customers’ behavioral intents.

Authors and Affiliations