Understanding the user satisfaction and loyalty of customer service chatbots

The artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot is emerging as a significant corporate customer-facing application, potentially increasin customer service efficiency while reducing costs. However, little work has sought to assess the quality of service they provide consumers. This study applies the e-service quality by incorporating conversational AI quality to predict users' satisfaction and loyalty to customer service chatbots. The proposed model was empirically evaluated using survey data collected from 219 users responding about their perceptions of customer service chatbots. The findings indicate that AI chatbot service recovery quality and AI chatbot conversational quality significantly influence user satisfaction. On the other hand, core AI chatbot service quality and satisfaction significantly influenced chatbot user loyalty. This study contributes to researchers and practitioners by proposing and evaluating a more comprehensive chatbot e-service quality that combines both fundamental (core service and service recovery qualities) and human-like (conversational quality) aspects of e-service. The results are of value in devising future AI chatbot services and related strategies.     

网上零售市场电子服务质量评价研究

本文全面回顾了网上零售市场电子服务质量评价研究文献,深入剖析了几种常用的网上零售市场电子服务质量评价量表,探讨了网上零售市场电子服务质量评价维度以及量表结构,指出了该领域目前的研究不足和未来研究方向,提出了针对网上零售市场具有普适性的电子服务质量评价的一般维度,主要包括可靠性/履行性、响应性/易接近性/联系性、易用性/可用性、网站设计、信息质量、隐私/安全以及个性化等,并将这些维度与传统服务质量评价维度进行了对比分析。     

Electronic and in-person service quality of hybrid services

The service industries have experienced dramatic changes in service delivery format because of fast-paced innovation in information technology. Hybrid services involve service deliveries through conventional and technology-enabled environments, each of which is complementary and non-interchangeable. However, limited research has examined consumer behavior in response to a series of relevant service episodes in different channels at different points in time. In other words, how customers perceive service quality at each service encounter and how the cumulative effect of these perceptions influences customers’ overall service value assessment and satisfaction remain unclear. This study addresses this research gap by investigating the sequential influence of e-service quality on in-person service quality in a hybrid service format in which interpersonal and computer-mediated services coexist but at different points in time. Empirical analysis shows that e-service quality directly and positively affects in-person service quality, which fully mediates the effects of e-service quality on perceived value and customer satisfaction. The sequence of service encounters matters because in-person service quality perception has a stronger effect than e-service quality on customer metrics. Cumulative quality perceptions significantly influence perceived value and overall customer satisfaction. Theoretical and managerial implications are presented in the discussion.     

Relationships between process quality,outcome quality,satisfaction, and behavioural intentions for online travel agencies – evidence from Taiwan

Instead of using the SERVQUAL-type scale, this study conceptualizes e-service quality by two dimensions – process quality and outcome quality – and explores the relationships between process quality, outcome quality, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions in the context of online travel agencies. Using an empirical survey consisting of 240 Taiwanese respondents who have purchased online travel agents' products, the results reveal that process quality and outcome quality have significantly direct and positive effects on satisfaction. In addition, there exists a significant influence of satisfaction on behavioural intentions. While supporting the quality–satisfaction–behavioural intentions relationship overall, this study specifically provides more insights into the construction and effects of e-service quality.     

Developing e-service quality scales: A literature review

This study reviews the literature on e-service quality (e-SQ), with an emphasis on the methodological issues involved in developing measurement scales and issues related to the dimensionality of the e-SQ construct. We selected numerous studies on e-SQ from well-known databases and subjected them to a thorough content analysis. The review shows that dimensions of e-service quality tend to be contingent on the service industry. Despite the common dimensions often used in evaluating e-SQ, regardless of the type of service on the internet (‘reliability/fulfilment’, ‘responsiveness’, ‘web design’, ‘ease of use/usability’, ‘privacy/security’, and ‘information quality/benefit’), other dimensions are specific to e-service contexts. The study also identifies several conceptual and methodological limitations associated with developing e-SQ measurement such as the lack of a rigorous validation process, the problematic sample size and composition, the focus on functional aspects, and the use of a data-driven approach. This is the first study to undertake an extensive literature review of research on the development of e-SQ scales. The findings should be valuable to academics and practitioners alike.     

What do Airbnb hosts reveal by posting photographs online and how does it affect their perceived trustworthiness?

The use of sellers' personal photographs online is ubiquitous in sharing economy platforms such as Airbnb. This paper addresses two questions. First, what type of personal photos do hosts choose to post on Airbnb? Second, which of the characteristics of their photos affects their perceived trustworthiness? We answer these questions by building a structural equation model of the relation between the characteristics of the photos and the perceived trustworthiness of the hosts. The antecedents of trust in this model were defined based on insights from psychology regarding first impressions. We found that the hosts' visual characteristics (e.g., gender) as revealed in their online photographs affect their perceived trustworthiness both directly and indirectly via attractiveness. We also found that image characteristics, which are not related directly to the traits of the host in the picture (e.g., photograph quality), play a significant role in trust inference. Interestingly, the hosts' choices of their personal photos suggest that they may not be aware of these effects.     

Critical success factors for e-commerce entrepreneurship: an empirical study of Thailand

The present study focuses on the relationships between entrepreneurial characteristics (achievement orientation, risk taking propensity, locus of control, and networking), e-service business factors (reliability, responsiveness, ease of use, and self-service), governmental support, and the success of e-commerce entrepreneurs. Results confirm that the achievement orientation and locus of control of founders and business emphasis on reliability and ease of use functions of e-service quality are positively related to the success of e-commerce entrepreneurial ventures in Thailand. Founder risk taking and networking, e-service responsiveness and self-service, and governmental support are found to be non-significant.      

Loyalty toward online food delivery service: the role of e-service quality and food quality

This study assesses the direct influence of food quality and e-service quality on customer loyalty toward online food delivery (OFD) service and its indirect influence through the mediation of customer satisfaction and perceived value. This study uses a survey of 405 OFD service customers from Bandung, Indonesia. By applying variance-based partial least squares to evaluate the proposed model, this study confirms the direct effect of food quality on online loyalty, but not e-service quality. Further, this study discloses the partial mediation role of customer satisfaction and perceived value on the relationship between both food quality and e-service quality on online loyalty toward OFD services.     

Customer-perceived value and loyalty: how do key service quality dimensions matter in the context of B2C e-commerce?

This paper develops a research model to examine the effect of e-service quality dimensions on customer-perceived value and customer loyalty. Based on a survey of 235 online customers, we identify five key e-service quality dimensions: care, reliability, products portfolio, ease of use, and security. Our empirical results show that all the five dimensions have significant and positive impacts on customer-perceived value which, in turn, increases customer loyalty. We further examine the mediating role of customer-perceived value in the relationship between each e-service quality and customer loyalty. The results suggest that customer-perceived value plays a partially mediating role in the effect of ease of use, care, product portfolio, and reliability on customer loyalty, and a fully mediating role in the relationship between security and customer loyalty. Managers may be in a position to benefit by employing the model presented in this study in an effort to improve service performance and, hence, retain customers.     

E-Service Quality: A Meta-Analytic Review

The dominance of the internet as a shopping and distribution channel also necessitates an understanding of e-service quality. Using means-ends-chain theory, we develop a conceptual framework to understand the different models and the associated multiple measures that have been developed to examine this construct. We test the measures empirically using meta-analytic techniques. We also summarize the impact of e-service quality on key outcomes—customer satisfaction, repurchase intentions, and word-of-mouth, as well as the moderating impact of three contextual factors: country culture, regulatory environment, and industry context. Results indicate that e-service quality has four underlying dimensions (website design, fulfilment, customer service, and security/privacy) though their relevance for overall e-service quality is moderated by country-specific (uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, power distance, individualism), regulatory environment-specific (financial secrecy, rule of law), and industry-specific (services/goods, retailing/banking) factors as well as research-design factors.     

Attribute Perceptions,Customer Satisfaction and Intention to Recommend E-Services

Academic research has focused on the quality perceptions that drive customer satisfaction as the key to achieving e-service success. This paper develops a process-based model that relates perceptions of managerially actionable site characteristics to online satisfaction, which mediates the effects of site characteristics on intention to recommend e-services. A unique data set provided by Web Mystery Shoppers International Inc. (webmysteryshoppers.com), a market research supplier, enables the model to be refined using data from samples of responses to each of the competitive websites for one financial service, and then to be tested using similar data for another financial e-service and then for a travel e-service. The model, which accounts for most of the variance in online satisfaction and online intention to recommend in the fitted data, is largely confirmed on cross validation. Process evaluations and satisfaction mediate the effects of actionable website characteristics on intention to recommend e-services.     

A consumer typology based on e-service quality and e-satisfaction

The increasingly systematic use of the Internet in consumers’ decision-making processes, coupled with the development of e-commerce, has led researchers and practitioners to examine issues concerning service quality and satisfaction in an online context. This paper proposes a post-hoc predictive typology of e-satisfaction based on four dimensions of e-service quality. A sample of 1144 French consumers recruited on websites from three different industries (online travel, cultural goods (books, CDs, DVDs, etc.), and electronics goods) was used to generate the proposed typology. Using a mixture modeling regression, five groups of consumers who differed in terms of e-satisfaction and e-service quality were identified: the ‘involved’, the ‘browsers’, the ‘fun seekers’, the ‘careful’ and the ‘surfers’. All the four e-service quality dimensions investigated were found to influence e-satisfaction. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Measuring the antecedents of e-loyalty and the effect of switching costs on website

This paper deals with the process by which electronic customer loyalty (e-loyalty) is formed. The twofold aim is to analyse e-loyalty, describing its development in terms of how it is influenced by several determinants and to study potential barriers to switching which significantly affect the repeat purchase decision. In particular, an integrating theoretical framework is proposed to determine the e-loyalty dependency of electronic service quality and perceived value, and how this last relationship can be moderated by switching costs. Results offer evidence for the important role of customer's perceptions of e-service quality and value in e-loyalty. Proposals are made of how companies that are online can use this knowledge to build marketing strategies.     

基于熵权法的e-服务质量评价方法研究

根据传统环境下的SERVQUAL模型、技术采用模型和自服务技术理论,识别出了e-服务质量的决定因素,从可靠性、易用性、安全性、客户关怀和信任等五方面建立了开放式的、评价e-服务质量的指标体系。为了克服传统测评中各指标权重确定方法的局限性,做到静态赋权与动态赋权相结合,借助于“熵”的概念,对用AHP法所确定的初始评价指标权重进行调整,增强了评价的合理性和科学性。应用实例表明,调整后的权重能更准确地反应实际情况。结论可促进企业e-服务质量发展的科学化和规范化的进程。     

How Do Franchisees Assess Franchisor Trustworthiness?

This study investigates the antecedents of franchisees’ assessments of franchisor trustworthiness. It combines multiple theoretical perspectives to develop a framework that is empirically tested with survey data from 128 franchisees of a Dutch franchise system. The results show that franchisees’ perceptions of a franchisor's fulfillment of its functional duties on proactive and reactive quality assurance and strategic management positively influence franchisees’ assessments of franchisor trustworthiness. Moreover, the results show that the impact of the antecedents on franchisees’ trustworthiness assessments varies across franchisees: market competition attenuates the influence of strategic management and reactive quality assurance. Unit performance does not moderate the importance of the antecedents.     

The Impact of a Third-Party Assurance Seal in Customer Purchasing Intention

ABSTRACT

Although e-commerce is evolving at an incredible speed, asymmetric information and opportunism have increased online purchasing risks and market inefficiencies. The lack of face-to-face contact and the inability of the customer to touch and feel tangible products necessitate that online business must provide customers with reliable information and convince customers of their trustworthiness. While the research on Third-Party Assurance Seals (TPAS) is not new, the effectiveness of TPAS has not been persuasively addressed by empirical studies. Our study is different from previous efforts in that it is comprehensive because it combines consumer trust, perceived risk, and influences of TPAS in the B2C e-commerce context. The results of the study show that (1) the effects of TPAS on perceived risk are channeled through perceived trustworthiness, thus demonstrating the mediating role of perceived trustworthiness in B2C e-commerce, (2) perceived risk, perceived usefulness of website, and subjective norm appear to be significant predictors of intention to purchase from the website, (3) a third-party assurance seal strongly affects online shoppers' perceived trustworthiness toward online retailers, while the seal appears to have little effect on perceived risk directly; perceived risk is strongly associated with intention to purchase from the website.     

Examining E-Commerce Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: An Integrated Quality-Risk-Value Perspective

Because of the inherently virtual nature of online environments, maintaining customer loyalty on business-to-customer (B2C) e-commerce websites is a challenging task. Although there have been many e-commerce studies that investigate customer loyalty in various B2C contexts, none of them have examined loyalty by simultaneously adopting quality-, risk-, and value-driven perspectives. This study integrates the quality-satisfaction-loyalty paradigm and the extrinsic cue-quality-risk-value chain to develop a theoretical model of customer loyalty that is based on an integrated quality-risk-value perspective. Data collected from 542 experienced online shoppers are used to validate the theoretical research model. Additionally, the mediation effects of perceived e-service quality, perceived risk, perceived value, and satisfaction on the relationship between electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and loyalty in B2C websites are validated using rigorous statistical methods. As hypothesized, the findings indicate that both positive and negative eWOM significantly influence perceived e-service quality and perceived risk and, in turn, significantly affect perceived value, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty via the mediation of perceived e-service quality and risk. This study substantially enriches our understanding of the success of B2C websites by highlighting how the sequential causal relationships among key extrinsic cues, quality, risk, and value can strongly influence customer satisfaction and loyalty on these websites. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Transformative value co-creation with older customers in e-services: Exploring the influence of customer participation on appreciation of digital affordances and well-being

This study challenges the negative assumption that older customers struggle to adapt to e-service by exploring the positive influence of their participation on transformative value co-creation. A two-phase mixed-methods approach was adopted to develop and validate the research model. The results found that customer participation, including information sharing, responsible behaviors, and in-role feedback, promotes older customers' digital skills and basic needs satisfaction, leading to higher appreciation of digital affordances and well-being. Additionally, online employees’ customer orientation positively moderates the above relationships. This study provides insight for service providers to include older customers in e-services.     

Alternative Models of Trustworthiness of Service Providers

ABSTRACT

The structure and dimensionality of the trustworthiness construct are important theoretical and practical issues. Building on the work of Ennew and Sekhon and based on a sample of 625 respondents, this research identifies a six-factor structure of trustworthiness of service providers in the retail banking sector: customer orientation, integrity and honesty, communication and similarity, shared values, expertise, and ability and consistency. After assessing the reliability and validity of this factor structure, the study also compares the five alternative models of trustworthiness. Results indicated that the trustworthiness model with the six first-order factors has the best model fit. Higher order confirmatory factor analysis was used to identify three second-order trustworthiness factors, which are competency, openness, and benevolence. The various dimensions of trustworthiness are viewable as levers of improving a bank's trustworthiness in the minds of its current and potential customers.