The Role of Service Quality on Customer Satisfaction in Internet Retailing: A Comparative Study of Apparel and Book Industries

The aim of this research is to investigate the effects of perceived e-service quality on e-satisfaction and to demonstrate how these effects differ in several business industries. In this context, customers of two competing brands from different sectors (apparel and books) were chosen as research sample. Research data that gathered from 590 consumers via internet survey was analyzed with regression analysis. Research results show that perceived e-service quality has a significant effect on e-satisfaction. Although "privacy" and "technical" dimensions are important factors for e-service quality, they have no significant effect on e-satisfaction while other factors which are "effectiveness, execution of transactions, customer relations, design, entertainment" have significant effect on customer satisfaction. "Execution of transactions" was found to be the most important in explaining e-satisfaction while "design" factor explains the least. Also the hypothesized effects in the research model for perceived e-service quality on e-satisfaction differ partially between selected industries.