Assessing e-service quality of B2C sites: a proposed framework
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Assessing e-service quality of B2C sites: a proposed framework Shakeel Iqbal1
•
Zeeshan Ahmed Bhatti2 • Muhammad Naeem Khan1
Received: 9 January 2018 / Accepted: 1 September 2018 Ó Bharati Vidyapeeth’s Institute of Computer Applications and Management 2018
Abstract E-services play a crucial role in attracting new online customers as well as retaining the old ones. This research paper is an attempt to define a framework for assessing the quality of e-services offered by B2C e-commerce websites. The proposed e-service quality framework (e-SQF) is applied on ten most popular B2C e-commerce websites in Pakistan to assess their relative state of e-service quality. The selected websites are assessed on each of the eight e-service quality dimensions defined in the e-SQF (i.e., e-search, e-response, e-transaction, e-payment, assurance and trust, e-help and e-technologies, post-sales support and website design and functionality). An overall assessment of each of the selected websites is also made to rank them in order of quality of e-services offered. The proposed framework can be a useful tool to quantify the quality of e-services offered by the e-tailers. Keywords e-Service quality E-Tailing B2C e-commerce e-Service quality framework e-Service quality dimensions
& Shakeel Iqbal [email protected] Zeeshan Ahmed Bhatti [email protected] Muhammad Naeem Khan [email protected] 1
Department of Business Administration, Iqra University Islamabad, Campus Plot No. 5, Sector H-9, Islamabad, Pakistan
2
Department of Management Information Systems, Faculty of Economics and Administration, King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
1 Introduction The term e-commerce has been defined differently by different researchers—some have defined e-commerce in a narrower sense as to be any buying and/or selling activity over the internet (e.g., [1]; whereas some others have looked it from a broader perspective covering all online activities [2] including searching, enquiring, ordering, payment order tracking, and post-sales support. ‘‘Electronic commerce is not solely restricted to the actual buying and selling of products, but also includes pre-sale and post-sale activities across the supply chain.’’ [3] p 13. E-commerce activities gained tremendous boost in the recent years. According to the Global B2C E-commerce Report (2016), 1.4 billion people out of the estimated global population of 7.3 billion purchased goods and/or services online at least once in 2015 [4]. The report further states that worldwide e-commerce spending in 2015 was estimated around US $2272.7 billion which means approximately US $1582 were spent by each e-shopper. The top ten countries in terms of e-commerce sales mentioned in the same report during the period 2012–2016 (in descending order) were: China, USA UK, Japan, France, Germany, South Korea, Canada, India and Russia. The trend of online shopping is also getting popular in developing countries mainly due to the introduction of third generation (3G) and long-ter
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