A Proposal to Assess the Service Quality of Online Travel Agencies: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

The importance of service quality in improving customer satisfaction and loyalty in traditional business settings has been established through the use of such instruments as SERVQUAL. 54 However, these established service quality dimensions, or similar measures, have not been applied to electronic commerce settings. Using online travel services as a case study, an assessment tool, E-QUAL, was developed to evaluate the service quality of electronic commerce businesses from the consumers' perspective. In contrast to the existing Web site evaluation tools that focus on the ''coolness'' or level of ''interactivity'' of the site, E-QUAL is based on the proven conceptual framework of the SERVQUAL instrument and is adjusted for the unique attributes of the electronic commerce. The findings have theoretical and managerial implications for assessing quality of service for online companies.

The impact of hedonic and utilitarian value of online avatars on e-service quality

“…Loiacono et al (2007) adapted the WEBQUAL tool to account for such characteristics including: ease of understanding, intuitive operations, information quality, functional fit-to-task, tailored-communication, trust, response time, visual appeal, innovativeness, emotional appeal, online completeness, consistent image, and relative advantage. In her analysis of e-service literature, Rowley (2006) compared several tools that are specifically focused on users' online experience such as WebQual (Loiacono et al, 2002;Barnes & Vidgen, 2001), E-Qual (Kaynama & Black, 2000), SITEQUAL (Yoo & Donthu, 2001), e-SQ (Zeithaml, Parasuraman, & Malhotra, 2002) and ETailQ (Wolfinbarger & Gilly, 2003). In our study, we used WEBQUAL for measuring e-service quality.…”

Reviewing the Online Tourism Value Chain

“…Different dimensions have been identified, mainly regarding easy-of-use, information quality and customer service (e.g., Kaynama and Black 2000;Madu and Madu 2002;Kim and Lee 2004;). Usability, functionality and security-privacy have been confirmed by Ali (2016) as utilitarian dimensions of hotel website quality.…”

“…The purchasing experience of customers is increased by the integrity, uniqueness, preciseness and entertainment value of a website, as well as the opportunity for information/content (Kaynama and Black 2000;Aladwani and Palvia 2002;Sigala and Sakellaridis 2004). Thus, service information (SI) can be defined as the degree to which a user believes that the information or content is useful, updated and reliable.…”

Managing Service Quality Customer Loyalty and the Role of Relationship Length

“…Many studies inspect of publicity have to define service quality and make bigger instruments to calculate it. Many studies have used SERVQUAL to estimate service quality in a variety of domains, ranging from financial services (Lin & Wei, 1999), service of physical condition service of travel agent (Kaynama & Black, 2000), and service of retailing (Mehta, 2000), restaurants (Lee & Hing, 1995).…”