. His research focuses on explaining and predicting consumer behaviour on the internet, and identifying critical success factors contributing to the success of internet business. E-mail: bcoker@unimelb.edu.auPublished by/ Publicado por: TECSI FEA USP -2013 All rights reserved.
ANTECEDENTS TO WEBSITE SATISFACTION, LOYALTY, AND WORD-OF-MOUTH Brent CokerUniversity of Melbourne, St Victoria, Australia __________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT Satisfaction, loyalty, and likelihood of referral are regarded by marketers and the Big Three diagnostics leading to retail profitability. However, as yet no-one has developed a model to capture all three of these constructs in the context of the internet. Moreover, although several attempts have been made to develop models to measure quality of website experience, no-one has sought to develop an instrument short enough to be of practical use as a quick customer satisfaction feedback form. In this research we sought to fill this void by developing and psychometrically testing a parsimonious model to capture the Big Three diagnostics, brief enough to be used in a commercial environment as a modal popup feedback form.Keywords: website quality measurement, online satisfaction, internet purchase intention
INTRODUCTIONDespite the relative maturity of E-commerce, online sales continue to grow at a phenomenal rate (U. S. Census Bureau, 2010). Recent forecasts from Forrester predict online retail sales will grow to $250 Billion by 2014, accounting for 8 percent of all retail sales in the US. Already, 44 percent of computers, apparel, and consumer electronics are purchased online (Forrester, 2009), highlighting the importance of the internet as a retail channel for many industries.Since the late nineties, academics and practitioners alike have recognised the similarities between quality of experience using an e-commerce website, and quality of experience in a physical retail store. Ultimately the common function of both channels is to facilitate search, evaluation, and transaction (Teo and Yeong, 2003, Alba et al., 1997). Accordingly, well established marketing constructs known to affect the profitability of traditional channels such as customer satisfaction (Anderson and Sullivan, 1993), loyalty (Dick, 1994, and likelihood of referral (Anderson, 1998) have been identified as important to evaluate the quality of website experience (e.g., Balasubramanian et al., 2003, Gruen et al., 2006, Shankar et al., 2003. The difference however is how these important variables are shaped. Issues of trust (Ba and Pavlou, 2002), ease of use (Gefen et al., 2003), information content and design (Ranganathan and Ganapathy, 2002), and load speed (Ramsay et al., 1998) are all important factors affecting the quality of website experience, potentially impacting customer satisfaction.Given the rapid growth of e-commerce and the importance of understanding customer behaviour online, several attempts have been made at developing models that measure and explain website ...