Determining the impact of e-commerce quality on customers’ perceived risk, satisfaction, value and loyalty

The quality assessment of e-commerce services is of particular research interest, as it has been widely found that quality is directly linked to customer satisfaction and loyalty, which in turn leads to improved sales results, the creation of reputation and enhanced competitiveness for active companies in the industry. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the quality in e-commerce and to examine the relationships developed among its individual dimensions and satisfaction, perceived value, perceived risk and customer loyalty.

Initially, exploratory factor analysis with the equamax rotation method was applied to identify the perceptions of consumers regarding quality, value, satisfaction, risk and loyalty. The effect of the factors that make up perceived quality of e-services on customer value, satisfaction, risk and loyalty was examined by using OLS regression analysis. Likewise, path analysis was applied to confirm the impact of perceived quality on total consumer satisfaction, perceived value and loyalty, utilizing perceived risk as a moderating variable.

The authors found that quality overall has a positive and statistically significant relationship with perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty and negative with perceived risk. From the individual dimensions of quality, it has been found that ease of use of websites, design, responsiveness and security lead to increased levels of perceived value, while ease of use, responsiveness and personalization lead to an increase in the overall satisfaction of consumers. Overall, it has been documented that high levels of quality lead to higher satisfaction and perceived value, mitigating perceived risk and positively impacting the adoption of desirable consumer behaviors as reflected in customer loyalty.

In this respect, future research in the field of e-commerce can examine the quality of the respective electronic services taking into account different product and business categories. In addition, the future research can focus on the impact of high satisfaction, perceived value and customer loyalty on various sizes of business performance, including sales, market share, competitiveness, financial efficiency and sustainability.

Given the clear relationship between quality, perceived value and satisfaction, e-commerce businesses have the potential to benefit significantly from improvements in the quality of their services, as this leads to increased levels of perceived value, high level of satisfaction and hence enhanced customer loyalty, which is in turn reflected in increased sales, positive word-of-mouth, improved reputation and brand loyalty. In this way, e-businesses will be able to improve their financial position, achieve higher market shares, maintain their competitive advantage, attract new development resources and become sustainable on a long-term basis.

Businesses need to understand the factors that determine the quality in e-commerce to be able to achieve customer satisfaction and reduce perceived risk through improved quality. These factors, which consumers perceive as important for quality, are critical.

The concepts of quality, perceived value, risk, satisfaction and loyalty are considered to be interlinked in both traditional consumer research and e-commerce, as high levels of perceived quality are believed to lead to positive assessments of the cost-benefit and, hence, the perceived value (Cronin et al., 2000; Sweeney and Soutar, 2001; Korda and Snoj, 2010) and loyalty. In this context, this study attempted to study the relationship of these five variables, through both regression and path analysis, resulting in similar results. According to the findings of the study, perceived quality of website services has a positive and statistically significant impact on perceived value, satisfaction and an opposite effect on perceived risk, while the last is mitigating variable for and loyalty.