FöRFATTARE
Nath, Atanu; Zheng, Liu

INSTITUTION
Industriell ekonomi och samhällsvetenskap / Industriell marknadsföring och e-handel

SAMMANFATTNING
E-commerce as we know today has burgeoned with the advent of the World Wide Web and the subsequent mass acceptance and usage of it. Its huge potential for commercial and transactional purposes has not yet been fully tapped. One of the newer areas of marketing theory application in the context of the Internet, or more specifically E-Commerce is Service Marketing. In this paper, we explore the possibility of extending the existing tools for assessing and measuring service quality as perceived by customers to the context of purely virtual enterprises. Our aim is to see whether there are differences perceived by customers in service quality across online service based companies; and identify the attributes responsible for any such perceived differences; and the areas in which customers do not distinguish between providers. Confirmation and disconfirmation of a set of hypotheses is used to determine the distinctions based on variances between the identified attributes. Our findings indicate customers today set purely internet based service companies apart based on tangibility, reliability, and responsiveness of the companies rather than their perceived credibility and security in services offered. This indicates a blurring down of the divisions between online and offline service providing companies in the customer’s mind. Our interpretation of this blurring down of division is that e-commerce and transactions online has gained maturity and customers no longer feel trepidation regarding the often touted issues of credibility and security exclusive to online entities. Rather, today they are more concerned with who is able to provide them with better service with respect to their product centric worries that are more traditional in nature. Our recommendation for marketers would be to stop viewing themselves as purveyors of online or off-line services, but rather as purveyors of simply “services” and ensure quality therein. The customer has stopped caring whether service is delivered online, or off-line; for them the novelty of receiving services online has worn out, with the resultant expectations that quality in the more traditional aspects of service delivery would match at least that received offline. It is time the marketers stopped worrying where to position their selves along the click and mortar spectrum, and follow the customer’s lead.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--04/266--SE / NR 2004:266