Seller experience assessment in online marketplace: a scale development study

Abstract

PurposeRecent decade has witnessed exponential growth in e-commerce segment, leading to emergence of various online selling platforms catering to diverse product requirements of customers. Such a development has provided impetus to both existing businesses and newly established ventures to make available their offerings through online selling platforms with a view to improve the reach of their products. This study is an attempt to identify the experience of registered vendors with the online marketplaces. It aims to develop and validate a scale to measure vendor's experience with e-commerce platforms.Design/methodology/approachAs a part of the scale development process, relevant literature sources were scanned to spot the precise knowledge gap and to put in place a sound theoretical background for the study. Thereafter, a scientific approach was adopted for scale creation. First, the scale items were identified through interviews of vendors registered with major online selling platforms and other academic experts pertaining to the marketing domain. Subsequently, major dimensions of seller experience were identified through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) applied on data collected from active vendors by the means of a structured survey instrument. The final data set was subjected to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in a bid to validate the scale.FindingsThe study’s outcomes reveal that seller experience in an online marketplace can be best captured by a multidimensional scale characterized by six major dimensions. These are “Registration,”; “Product Listing”; “Pricing Autonomy”; “Ease of Pick-up and Delivery”; “Credit of Receivables” and “Vendor Assistance.” A proper emphasis to continually improve upon these dimensions by the e-commerce platforms is expected to enhance the utility and overall experience of vendors from such platforms. Existence of a mutually beneficial relationship between vendors and online marketplaces will help marketplaces to mitigate concerns like nonfulfillment of orders and dispatch of substandard products.Originality/valueSustainable long-term relations between vendors and online marketplaces hold the key for such marketplaces to render error-free and delightful service on each individual order received. Seller experience of registering and operating on such e-marketplaces inspite of playing a defining role in vendor–marketplace relations has received scant attention of researchers, both in academia and industry till date. The present research is a seminal attempt to address this gap in marketing literature and offer additional know-how.

Casual selling practice: a qualitative study of non-professional sellers' involvement on C2C social commerce platforms

“…Researchers have also become interested in the ways technological configurations, including aspects related to social media design, favour purchase intentions (Baethge et al, 2016;Hussain et al, 2021) and in engagement patterns and strategies related to marketing, including pricing, advertising or customer relationships for s-commerce sellers (Baethge et al, 2016;Dehouche, 2020;Kumar et al, 2021;Wongkitrungrueng et al, 2020). Finally, the success of communication and advertising processes in s-commerce has mainly been observed from specific standpoints, including the channel's transaction speed, growth and performance (Bugshan and Attar, 2020;Ng, 2013;Riaz et al, 2021).…”

“…, 2021) and in engagement patterns and strategies related to marketing, including pricing, advertising or customer relationships for s-commerce sellers (Baethge et al. , 2016; Dehouche, 2020; Kumar et al. , 2021; Wongkitrungrueng et al.…”

“…By focusing on the C2C seller's perspective, this study departs from the literature related to sales on s-commerce, which has mainly investigated specific B2C platforms and aimed to understand how sales performance can be increased (Chen et al. , 2021; Dehouche, 2020; Kumar et al. , 2021; Wongkitrungrueng et al.…”

“…By focusing on the C2C seller's perspective, this study departs from the literature related to sales on s-commerce, which has mainly investigated specific B2C platforms and aimed to understand how sales performance can be increased (Chen et al, 2021;Dehouche, 2020;Kumar et al, 2021;Wongkitrungrueng et al, 2020). Localized in C2C contexts, it considers the unaddressed non-professional sellers' involvement taking into consideration the sociocultural and interactional drivers of engagement recently acknowledged in the literature (Busalim et al, 2021;Cheng et al, 2019;Gibreel et al, 2018;Ng, 2013).…”

Selecting the Suitable E-Commerce Marketplace With Neutrosophic Fuzzy Ahp and Edas Methods From Seller's Perspective in the Context of Covid-19

“…Arif et al (2020) prioritized the goods sellers alternatives in an e-marketplace by combining the VIKOR with the SMARTER methods using five selection criteria which are product price, number of products sold, seller score rating, number of reviews with five stars, and location distance. Yuianto and Wibowo (2020) described the e-marketplace selection approach using fuzzy AHP and the fuzzy MOORA approach in the alternative assessment and the fuzzy AHP method to weight the criteria Kumar et al (2021) aimed to determine registered vendors'/sellers' experiences with online marketplaces. They defined major dimensions of the seller experience using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).…”