Online Retail Service Quality: What Matters Most for Customer Satisfaction?

With technological advancements, the availability of low-cost smartphones and internet connectivity, the online retail industry has gained traction. A pandemic-related lockdown has fuelled the fire. Consequently, it becomes important to identify the factors defining online retail service quality (ORSQ), which affect customer satisfaction and customer engagement behaviour. First, a qualitative study was conducted to identify ORSQ factors and reliability, ease of use, customer-friendly policies, problem handling and security were found to be the most vital ones for Indian consumers. Further, a quantitative study was attempted to determine the impact of ORSQ factors on consumer satisfaction and customer engagement behaviour. While testing these relationships, website familiarity was considered as a moderating variable between ORSQ factors and customer satisfaction. The findings of the study suggest that the identified ORSQ factors influence customer satisfaction and customer engagement behaviour in turn. The moderating effect of website familiarity was also established on customer satisfaction. For the analysis, Smart PLS 3.0 was used.