Service Quality in the E-Retailing Industry: A Case Study on Amazon.com

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Marketing, Corporate Communication, CRM, Market Research, Social Media, grade: 1,0, University of Brighton, language: English, abstract: This study aims to identify, analyze and prove dimensions contributing to the e-service quality (e-SQ) and satisfaction of online shopping. It takes ‘amazon.com’ as a case study and utilizes the critical incident technique in order to gather meaningful primary data for both satisfying and dissatisfying critical incidents. For this research, a probability sample was adopted, by distribution an electronic questionnaire to potential participants. The questionnaire comprised of a total of nine questions and was completed by 25 participants, generating 50 critical incidents. The content analysis of the primary data led to four main emergent themes from which three could be attributed to both satisfying and dissatisfying service encounters, whereas one was solely based on dissatisfying incidents. The categories include service recovery (SR), customer support service (CSS), delivery quality and product quality. Throughout the analysis of the findings, the intangibility of e-SQ became apparent, as many incidents were related to behavioral traits. This study further. This study emphasized the multiplicity of academic opinions regarding e-SQ and followed the stance of Collier and Bienstock (2006), by examining their dimensions and was consequently trying to either prove or reject the statements within their study. Resulting from the findings as well as the related conclusions of this study, recommendations were drawn on the specific example of ‘amazon.com’ as well as the overall e-retail industry and future research.