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Customer Satisfaction towards Online Shopping

Abstract: Online shopping is a process whereby consumers directly buy goods, services etc. from a seller without an intermediary service over the Internet. Shoppers can visit web stores from the comfort of their house and shop as by sitting in front of the computer. Online stores are usually available 24 hours a day and many consumers have internet access both at work and at home. So it is very convenient for them to shop Online. One of the most enticing factors about online shopping, particularly during holiday season is, it alleviates the need to wait in long lines or search from a store for a particular item. Variety of goods is available in online. So the researcher wants to know the preference of the consumers. So fifty respondents were met and data were collected regarding their preference towards shopping online.

Introduction: Online shopping as defined by the Master Card Worldwide Insight is a process of purchasing goods and services from the merchants who sell over the internet. Generally it is also known as internet buying, electronic shopping, or internet shopping. A website is a collection of World Wide Web files that includes a beginning file called a homepage. A company or individual tells you how to get to their website by giving the address of the homepage of their website. Daraz is the largest online shopping platform for fashion fanatics in Pakistan. While redefining the term online shopping and present it to the general population. Furthermore the website is specially designed to be user friendly and have a most responsive customer support team to handle the orders and the queries efficiently. Here the product quality and service quality directly affect the customer satisfaction in purchasing items from Daraz.pk. The most common problems faced by the consumers are related to the product quality, service quality. Prior research has claimed that the perceived service quality positively influences the customer satisfaction and purchase intension. But only few of them have investigated the usefulness of the relative service quality, customer satisfaction, purchase intension in the context of online shopping. The purpose of this study is to;

 

To identify the factors those influences the customer satisfaction towards online shopping from websites. To investigate the possible impact of product quality, service quality, and fulfillment of customer expectations on the customer satisfaction in online shopping.

Therefore this project focuses on the following research questions;  

What are the factors that affect the perceived product quality experience o customer satisfaction? What are the effective consequences of service quality and how does affect the mediate the relationship between the confirmation of expectations and customer satisfaction in online shopping?

Literature Review: A sociological theory seeks to explain social phenomena. Theories can be used to create a testable proposition, called a hypothesis, about society (Allan 2006). In sociology, a few theories provide broad perspectives that help explain many different aspects of social life, and these are called paradigms. Paradigms are philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them. Three paradigms have come to dominate sociological thinking, because they provide useful explanations: structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interaction.

Website Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction: Online shopping websites are called a structured collection of information about products and services which are displayed in the form of text, graphics, and videos (Ghaffari and Ashkiki, 2015). The main aim of the online shopping website is to provide information to the customers. Hence, Ghaffari & Ashkiki (2015) mentioned the quality of the information about the products and services that have been provided in the online shopping websites as the important indicators for determining customer satisfaction. Moreover, Hong, Zulkifli, Hamsani, & Shuaib (2017) found a significant relationship between website quality and customer satisfaction. Therefore, low-quality websites can be an excellent reason for customer lost along with the profit reduction of the company. In this way, Kumar & Velmurugan (2017) claimed that websites quality determines customers’ purchasing decisions. By proceeding with this process, customer satisfaction information can be known by understanding the online shopping website quality (Rasli et al., 2015). Because if customers feel that website quality is good, they tend to have higher satisfaction with online shopping. In contrary, if customers realize the poor quality of the online shopping website, they may be dissatisfied. Therefore, it is needed to know how website service quality impact on customers' feelings which eventually determine customers' satisfaction level towards online shopping. Several authors mentioned several website quality elements including information quality (Ghaffari & Ashkiki, 2015; Vasić, Kilibarda, & Kaurin, 2019; Ludin & Cheng, 2014), system quality (Lin, Wu, & Chang, 2011; Uzun & Poturak, 2014) and service quality (Wang & Le, 2015; Lin et al., 2011) that affect customer perception and in turn satisfaction level towards online shopping. But previously, several authors focused on the website service quality to examine customer satisfaction (Augustie, 2014; Pawlasova & Klezl, 2017; Zatalini & Pamungkas, 2017). Because the electronic service quality can determine how effectively and efficiently a website can provide facilities in case of buying, selling and delivering goods

and services to the online shopping customer (Ghaffari and Ashkiki, 2015). According to Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry (1988), service quality is the base of attaining information regarding customer satisfaction. Hence, according to the previous literature support, it can be said that website service quality can have a positive effect on customer satisfaction towards online shopping (Lin et al., 2011; Deyalage & Kulathunga, 2019; Guo, Ling, & Liu, 2012). Furthermore, Ghaffari & Ashkiki (2015) discussed that a website could meet the expectations of users and customers that in turn, affect customer satisfaction. Consequently, website service quality may have a significant effect on the expectation confirmation, and the next section has been described regarding this.

Website Service Quality and Confirmation of Expectation: A growing body of scholarly work has begun to examine the relationship between eservice quality and consumer expectations, primarily focusing on online shopping. The concept of electronic service quality is derived from the service quality construct suggested by (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry, 1994). Although there are no acceptable models and definitions of electronic service quality and its measurement, customer expectations confirmation regarding e-service quality is not even well described as those made in case of traditional service quality (Zeithaml, 1988). Because the service quality of the physical market can be measured by examining the customer's general expectations based on firm's performance (Nasser et al., 2015). On the other side, customer expectation in online shopping is different from the physical market. Because customer expectation confirmation depends on the online shopping website service quality, primarily how the website represents products and services with attractive information so that customers become interested to purchase (Nasser et al., 2015). Therefore, customer expectations from perceived service quality depend on confirmation or disconfirmation of the perceived service delivery, which consequently leads to the meeting, exceeding, or failure to customer satisfaction (Kim, 2012). Hence, it can be said that confirmation of customer expectation from website service quality can affect customer satisfaction. The next section will discuss this issue.

Confirmation of Expectation and Customer Satisfaction: Expectation-confirmation theory, suggested by Oliver (1980), indicated that satisfaction could be attained from disconfirmation and customer expectation of the products or services. This theory also describes that ‘disconfirmation’ has the strongest direct effect on satisfaction. Because confirmation of customer expectation happens when actual performance meets the expected standard. In contrary, negative disconfirmation can happen when actual performance fails to meet the expected standard. Consequently, the result of positive disconfirmation indicates actual performance exceeds the expected

standard (Chen et al., 2009). Thus, Chen et al. (2009) investigated the effect of confirmation of customer expectation on customer satisfaction with internet shopping. Similarly, Kim (2012) also identified the relationship between expectation, confirmation, and satisfaction. Hozhabri, Raeesi, Nor, Salimianrizi, & Tayebiniya (2014) additionally explained online shopping customer satisfaction with the confirmation of their expectation testing expectation-confirmation model in the context of Iran. Hence, based on the previous literature, it can be mentioned that there may have an important effect confirmation of customer expectation on examining their satisfaction level towards online shopping. Thus, this study explored it.

Quality: The quality of products and services in online commerce has a positive impact on customer satisfaction. The perceived product quality is defined as the consumer’s judgment about a product’s overall excellence or superiority. Keeney indicated that minimizing the product cost and maximizing the product quality are to be regarded as major factors in the success of e-commerce. Patterson pointed out that the perceived product performance is the most powerful determinant related to satisfaction. Conversely, a number of studies dealing with online commerce argue that the service quality has a positive influence on customer satisfaction. The quality of service determines whether the customers will develop strong and loyal relationships with online retailers. Online retailers that offer excellent service quality meet the expectations of their customers and thus improve their satisfaction. In the quality of service is interpreted as the degree of help by online retailers in providing an efficient and effective purchase, shipping and delivery of products and services. By providing and sending information either via formal or informal platforms, online vendors increase the expectations of their customers and add value to their services. Hence, it is very important to manage the quality in business to ensure the best service quality for consumers. Service quality is the ability implying firstly to anticipate, and secondly to meet the requirements by consumers. This is the reason why providing the service quality has an important role in increasing the customer satisfaction. Better website quality significantly influences the consumer's decision to shop online [49]. Based on the above, the following hypothesis has been defined.

Hypothesis: H1: Website service quality will have a positive impact on customer satisfaction. H2: Website service quality will have a positive impact on confirmation of expectations. H3: Product quality will have a positive impact on customer satisfaction H4: Product quality will have a positive impact on confirmation of expectations. H5: Confirmation of expectations will have positive impact on customer satisfaction.

Methodology: In this study, the quantitative method with a questionnaire survey has been used. Primary data was collected from a sample of 100 respondents in the Multan city of Pakistan. The target population for the survey was local public from Multan. Using the 5point Likert scale, responses in the questionnaire were recorded with 1=strongly Agree, 2=Agree, 3=Neutral, 4=Disagree, and 5=Strongly Disagree. Then, this study was used the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) for the purpose of analyzing primary that was collected from the public. The questionnaire was divided into four sections. Section 1 collected the e-mails of the respondents. Section 2 was about Product Quality and Service Quality. Section 3 was about the customer satisfaction and confirmation of expectations. Last and 4th section was about respondents' socio-demographic characteristics, including gender, age, marital status, household income, and education etc....