Key quality factors affecting users' perception of social networking websites

PurposeThe main aim of the present study is to evaluate the quality factors of websites and their effect on users' perceptions about quality in the context of social networking websites.Design/methodology/approachThis is an applied study conducted as a field survey. A conceptual framework of website quality is proposed and empirically tested that combines quality factors and users' overall perception about quality. Based upon conceptual frameworks in the areas of information systems and using responses from 300 users, a seven factors scale has been validated and data were used to test the conceptual model. To test validity of conceptual framework, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted and regression analysis was performed to examine the suggested hypotheses in the conceptual framework.FindingsIn this study, six different significant factors namely efficiency, entertainment, community drivenness, privacy, user friendliness, efficiency and navigability were identified to be significant for the service quality of social networking websites. Using the survey conducted in the statistical sample, only the factor of web appearance was identified as less important for social networking website users.Practical implicationsFindings from this research provide a set of essential and desired quality factors that social networking website developers can use to improve the quality of existing websites in turn increasing its numbers of users, thus bringing benefits to the company. Second, this study shows how perceived quality has a direct and profound effect on the degree of consumer perception about website quality.Originality/valueThis study, expanding a conceptual model, tries to identify the set of service quality factors for social networking websites. The information of these quality factors as a major predictor of consumers' quality perception provides social networking websites management an initial point for making successful quality management practices for their e-commerce.     

Key drivers of services website loyalty

The ease of website comparison and strong price competition encourage users to constantly switch tourism service providers. The present work analyses how satisfaction, trust, and commitment can help to strengthen loyalty towards websites selling accommodation services. Moreover, special attention is paid here to evaluate the moderating effects of gender on the relationships between these variables. Structural equation models were used to test the hypotheses on a sample of 230 Mexican Internet users, online purchasers of tourist accommodation services. The results show significant differences between men and women's post-purchase behaviour with a higher influence in women of trust on commitment and of commitment on loyalty towards accommodation services websites. Managerial implications for accommodation websites are provided.     

How Service-Related Factors Affect the Survival of B2T Providers: A Sentiment Analysis Approach

ABSTRACT

Nearly one-third of the business-to-team (B2T) websites in China closed down in 2011—the casualties of the intensified competition in the group-buying market. To investigate the critical factors to the survival of online B2T businesses in an overcrowded buyer-side market, we propose a model that links convenience, price, product/service, personalization, and website security/safety to customer satisfaction of B2T websites in light of the related literature. A two-stage approach is applied to validate this model. In Stage I, according to the results of an empirical analysis based on questionnaire responses from 157 B2T website users, we found that convenience and product/service are the top two contributors to the success of B2T business, as measured by customers’ repurchase intentions. In Stage II, topic classification and sentiment analysis are applied to 3046 review comments related to 58 B2T websites. The results from the Stage II study confirm the validity of the Stage I results with further evidence to support our arguments.     

Mobile Commerce Website Success: Antecedents of Consumer Satisfaction and Purchase Intention

With the rapid development of apparel mobile commerce in the United States, more companies view mobile commerce as a new source of competitive advantage. Despite the importance of apparel mobile website quality and its effect on consumer satisfaction and future purchase stimulus, extant research has paid little attention to these topics. This study proposes a website quality–consumer satisfaction–purchase intention research model based on the self-regulatory process theory. Six dimensions of apparel mobile website quality—website visual appeal, apparel visual appeal, brand trust, website information quality, website response time, and website security—were investigated. In all, 293 eligible responses were collected via an online survey. Multiple regression analysis was utilized to test the proposed relationships. Results reveal that website information quality, website visual appeal, apparel visual appeal, and website security positively affect consumer satisfaction toward apparel mobile commerce websites, while website response time and brand trust show insignificant impacts on consumer satisfaction. With higher satisfaction on an apparel mobile commerce website, consumers are more likely to purchase apparel through the website.     

Airline website loyalty formation and the moderating effects of gender and education

The objective of this study is to analyse the moderating effects of gender and education on users’ loyalty to the website of an airline. We provide a tested model for greater understanding the effects of gender and education on the loyalty of experienced users in utilitarian purchasers of airline’s website. The results reveal that website quality, e-satisfaction, e-trust and affective e-loyalty are antecedents of conative e-loyalty in loyalty relationships between passengers and airline websites, as well as the importance of university education in the configuration of loyalty to the website. Consumers with university education are found to be more likely to purchase through the websites of airline companies than those without. Also, according to the most recent literature, the moderating effect of gender has been found non-significant in most of the causal relationships presented in the model studied.     

Building loyalty with online financial services customers: Is there a gender difference?

This study proposes a research model of the determinants of customer loyalty in an online financial services context. The study examines the online service quality dimensions that influence e-trust and e-satisfaction, which in turn influence e-loyalty. The research assesses also the moderator role of gender in e-loyalty development. Using data collected from 376 users of a click-and-brick financial institution in Canada, the study finds that: (1) e-loyalty is positively related to e-satisfaction and e-trust; (2) e-satisfaction and e-trust are positively associated to perceived website efficiency and information quality; (3) gender does not moderate relationships between online service quality, e-satisfaction, e-trust, and e-loyalty; (4) women report higher levels of online service quality, e-satisfaction, e-trust, and e-loyalty than men. The study emphasises the role of website efficiency and information quality in developing loyalty for online financial services providers. Indeed, it suggests that online financial institutions do not need to segment their online market based on gender.     

基于收入满足度数据的性别差异研究——来自上海收入满足度问卷调查的数据

收入满足度是对生活质量综合评价的指标,反映理想生活或幸福生活的实现程度。本文通过性别分类和相关性分析,揭示基于收入满足度数据分析的六大性别差异:收入对男性生活的影响程度大于女性,健康对女性生活的影响程度大于男性,男性对工作的期望、要求高于女性,男性在婚姻中获得的收益大于女性,女性的学历与满足度的相关性大于男性,年轻女性收入满足度高于男性,中、老年男性收入满足度高于女性。     

Apparel retailers: website quality dimensions and satisfaction

Online retailers would benefit from studies that examine which website attributes can be manipulated to favorably affect consumer satisfaction. The purposes of the study were (1) to examine the dimensionality of website quality for apparel retailers and (2) to determine which dimensions of website quality were significant predictors of shopper satisfaction. Data were collected from 273 female online apparel shoppers. Loiacono's WebQual™ instrument was used to measure shopper perceptions of websites. Factor analysis identified six dimensions of website quality: (1) web appearance, (2) entertainment, (3) informational fit-to-task, (4) transaction capability, (5) response time, and (6) trust. Only three dimensions, informational fit-to-task, transaction capability, and response time, were significant predictors of shopper satisfaction.     

Gender Role Portrayals in Japanese Advertising: A Magazine Content Analysis

Abstract

The authors report a content analysis that assessed gender role portrayals in advertisements from highest circulation Japanese magazines. They found that, although some indigenous gender stereotyping was evident, several traits previously associated with Japanese women (devoted, obliging, rattle-brained, superstitious, thorough) were associated with men. Also, men were not linked with certain stereotypical male traits (autocratic, blustery, forgiving, generous, severe). Other findings included women being shown in a positive way as often as men. In terms of common international stereotypes, women were not associated with low priced products or portrayed as being more deferential than men. However, women still were portrayed as more concerned with appearance and as younger than men, were not depicted as product authorities, and were shown more often in sexist than in nonsexist depictions.     

‘The Business of Ethics and Gender’

Unethical decision-making behavior within organizations has received increasing attention over the past ten years. As a result, a plethora of studies have examined the relationship between gender and business ethics. However, these studies report conflicting results as to whether or not men and women differ with regards to business ethics. In this article, we propose that gender identity theory [Spence: 1993, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, 624–635], provides both the theory and empirical measures to explore the influence of psychological gender traits and gender-role attitudes on ethical perceptions of workplace behaviors. Statistical analyses of the data reveal that based on sex alone, no differences occur between men and women in their ethical perceptions. Yet, when a multidimensional approach to gender is applied, results show that expressive traits and egalitarian gender-role attitudes contribute to both men’s and women’s propensity to perceive unethical workplace behaviors as unethical. The implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are presented.     

Internet Marketing Communications in the Selling Process

Abstract

The internet represents an opportunity for sellers to communicate easily with potential and existing customers across the world. To what extent are websites and e-mail used in the selling process for complex services? A sample of advertising agency affiliates found some differences in the frequency of e-mail and website use for different selling tasks. In addition agencies in high-income regions used website communication more frequently than those in low-income regions, but no significant differences were discerned in e-mail use between the two groups.     

Multinational corporate website strategies and influencing factors: A comparison of US and Korean corporate websites

This study, using a content analysis method, explored whether and to what extent multinational corporate websites targeting different markets are standardized. It also tested three organizational factors – country of origin, company size, and product type – for their potential influence on the level of corporate website standardization. A sample of 52 top US-based multinational companies and 52 Korea-based multinational companies was drawn and a total of 104 pairs of websites for these companies were content-analyzed. Overall, the degree of website standardization was not significantly different between companies based in the two countries. The results suggest that both US and Korean multinational corporations tend to maintain their websites in a similar way when targeting the home and foreign markets. Among the three organizational factors, only product type – B2B versus B2C products and durables versus non-durables – was found to be significantly associated with the level of website standardization. This study makes important contributions to the research literature by offering new information on the current state of multinational corporate website strategies and advancing our knowledge about international marketing communications on the Internet and influencing factors.     

Reproducing “rhetrickery” in online fertility marketing: harnessing the “rhetoric of the possible”

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the gap in research on visual and narrative persuasion in online fertility marketing contexts and reveals their reliance on rhetorical ruses embedded in the language of “choice” and “empowerment”. We assess four websites targeting women and men who have experienced infertility and expose their “digirhetrickery”, or use of deceptive rhetoric in digital space which exploits gendered stereotypes of the female body in ways that ultimately mislead their target markets about assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and the “liberatory” potential they offer. We advance digital rhetoric as an analytical method to the field of consumer research in order to engage in a reflexive analysis that reveals these underhand ideological operations. As “authorial voices” and narrative agents in digital advertising discourse are more cunningly subterranean, this study shows how the instrumentalization of “consumer empowerment” has become increasingly hyperbolic with particularly problematic consequences for infertile women consumers.     

Successes and failures of the mirroring principle: the case of angling and beauty websites

This article examines whether industries with differing target markets in terms of their customers’ gender reflect the design preferences of their target markets in line with the mirroring principle. An analysis was conducted of websites of industries concentrated alternatively on male and female consumers, namely the angling and beauty salon industries. In each case, a random selection of 60 angling and beauty websites were rated using rating characteristics identified as typical of the male and female web‐design production aesthetic. The fact that each gender has a marked preference for the production aesthetic of its own gender, and that the websites of industries focused on, alternatively, male and female consumers, are produced using a predominantly male design production aesthetic, shows the current failure in certain industries to deliver the empathy or mirroring principle. The male domination of the information technology and web‐design industries, together with the earlier rooting of research on web aesthetics in the universalist, as against the interactionist perspective, are adduced as possible factors in this failure. This failure, if representative of other industries, could be leading to the suboptimal use of web design for markets not dominated by men, and may be one of the factors leading women to be less frequent users of the web than men.     

Encouraging male participation in cancer resource centers

ABSTRACT

This research investigates reasons why male cancer patients may refrain from patronizing cancer resource centers. By drawing upon a wide range of research from the social sciences and visual design literatures, the authors put forth original propositions that suggest how cancer resource center managers can manipulate a center's servicescape, or built environment, as well as its service offerings, website design, and printed communications to attract more male cancer patients. Despite the inherent challenges of discussing gender in cancer care and limitations to its generalizability in all settings, this research reveals that differences exist regarding the way men and women respond to cancer resource center marketing initiatives. Given the profound benefits that cancer resource centers often assume in a cancer patient's life, including a decreased mortality rate, we encourage service marketing and public health researchers, as well as cancer resource center directors, to consider the propositions put forth in this paper.     

Gender Differences in Service Quality Expectations in the Fast Food Industry

Abstract

Services marketers can influence the evaluation of service quality by “managing” customer expectations. Expectations can also provide insights into market segmentation strategies. Gender is often used as a segmentation variable since it is easily identifiable, accessible, and profitable. The purpose of this study was to examine if there are any gender-based differences in the expectations of service quality in the fast food industry. Hypotheses on gender differences in expectations were tested by an ANOVA, where the composite scores of each of the five dimensions of fast food service were used as dependent variables. The expectations of women were significantly higher than men in four of the five dimensions of fast food service quality.     

Use of and satisfaction with managed health care benefits: a comparison by gender

Abstract: This study examines whether the use of and satisfaction with managed health care benefits differs for men and women. The findings indicate that there are significant differences in both use of and satisfaction with managed care. Further analysis shows income level is a mediating factor in how men and women fare in their experience with managed care with regard to access and cost of care. Although access to health care appears to be linked to both gender and income, problems with care received are linked to income level rather than gender.     

Online determinants of e-customer satisfaction: application to website purchases in tourism

This paper examines the influence of four variables on online tourism customer satisfaction: website image perceptions, online routine, online knowledge, and customer innovativeness, and their simultaneous effects. The analysis gauges the moderating role of three socio-demographic characteristics: gender, age group, and educational background. A sample of 3188 regular online consumers of the Portuguese leader in the tourism sector was analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results show that website image, routine, and knowledge significantly influence e-customer satisfaction. Only gender moderates the impact of website knowledge on e-satisfaction. These results entail a better understanding of customer specificities, with practical actions for addressing their real needs and expectations.     

Global online marketplace: a cross‐cultural comparison of website quality

This study used Loiacono’s WebQual^TM scale to compare 278 US and 347 Korean Internet users in terms of their perceptions of retail website quality. The results of the study suggested that the dimensionality of website quality was not consistent across the two samples. This study also examined which dimensions of website quality influenced shoppers’ satisfaction with the site and purchase intention. The findings indicated that the relationship between website quality dimensions and the two dependent variables varied between the two groups.     

When Navigation Trumps Visual Dynamism: Hospital Website Usability and Credibility

In-depth interviews about hospital websites were conducted with 15 participants ranging in age, gender, occupation, and computer proficiency. Interviewees completed detailed usability tasks along with questionnaires that gauged perceptions of organizational and website credibility, including visual and technical dynamism. Participants ranked the most dynamic site lower than the less dynamic one because of navigation difficulties. Researchers advocate including usability tasks in website studies, rather than assessing perceptions based on short-term browsing protocols. They present a schema of website concepts organized into language credibility, visual credibility, and technical credibility that can be used in future research or by health communication practitioners. A list of best practices in navigation features is also included.