The extant measurement of E-service quality poses a series of gaps (challenges) and offers a range of opportunities for researchers (Barrutia & Gilsanz, 2009):
a) Few E-service quality definitions have been provided. Mostly they remain ambiguous and there is no consensus regarding the main elements.
b) There is a lack of solid theory-building research and more theory-supported research is needed: as research has often taken an exploratory approach in the development of scales, the structure and meaning of the obtained dimensions have mainly been determined ex-post by results from data analysis. A theoretical framework has hardly been used. Consequently, there should be more studies based upon a theoretical reference for developing scales. This would make it possible to test a pre-specified model structure and thereby help in advancing the study of E-service quality from exploratory to confirmatory approaches.
c) Most of the scales do not fully reflect the customer perception of E-service quality: Some scales and dimensions proposed for …show more content…
Therefore, online information searchers may differ from online purchasers when placing importance on website attributes. Online purchasers may be more critical of a website’s service quality than people who only use the website to find information. Information searchers evaluated the auditory experience/comparison shopping and navigation features as more important than online purchasers do. Online purchasers considered the auditory experience/comparison shopping features to be the least important criterion. Conversely, Cristobal et al. (2007) did not find significant differences in the results of their study when the total sample is divided between buyers and information searchers, but they refer to the consequences of E-service quality more than the E-service quality measure
a) Few E-service quality definitions have been provided. Mostly they remain ambiguous and there is no consensus regarding the main elements.
b) There is a lack of solid theory-building research and more theory-supported research is needed: as research has often taken an exploratory approach in the development of scales, the structure and meaning of the obtained dimensions have mainly been determined ex-post by results from data analysis. A theoretical framework has hardly been used. Consequently, there should be more studies based upon a theoretical reference for developing scales. This would make it possible to test a pre-specified model structure and thereby help in advancing the study of E-service quality from exploratory to confirmatory approaches.
c) Most of the scales do not fully reflect the customer perception of E-service quality: Some scales and dimensions proposed for …show more content…
Therefore, online information searchers may differ from online purchasers when placing importance on website attributes. Online purchasers may be more critical of a website’s service quality than people who only use the website to find information. Information searchers evaluated the auditory experience/comparison shopping and navigation features as more important than online purchasers do. Online purchasers considered the auditory experience/comparison shopping features to be the least important criterion. Conversely, Cristobal et al. (2007) did not find significant differences in the results of their study when the total sample is divided between buyers and information searchers, but they refer to the consequences of E-service quality more than the E-service quality measure