Development of electronic commerce user‐consumer satisfaction index (ECUSI) for Internet shopping
| Published date | 01 November 2001 |
| Pages | 400-406 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000006170 |
| Date | 01 November 2001 |
| Author | Namjae Cho,Sanghyuk Park |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
Development of electronic commerce user-consumer
satisfaction index (ECUSI) for Internet shopping
Namjae Cho
College of Business Administration, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea
Sanghyuk Park
College of Business Administration, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea
Introduction
Since the Internet was allowed to be used for
commercial purposes, various Internet-
related businesses have rapidly been
prospering all around the world. Most
companies' internal networks are linked to
the Internet, a large proportion of business
transactions is processed via the Internet,
and Internet domain names can be observed
everywhere from business cards to
signboards (Schwartz, 1997). As the share of
Internet shopping in total consumption
increases rapidly, researchers in electronic
commerce have tried to analyze the evolution
of demographics in the electronic market.
These analyses, however, have not provided
us with enough logic or rationale to explain
consumers' activities in the cybermarket.
There have been studies that examined
Internet shopping consumers purely from the
perspective of marketing. These studies
based their analysis on theories developed to
explain consumers' behavior in traditional
marketplaces and analyzed whether such
theories were applicable to the new context
(Carson et al., 1996). However, the reality is
that consumers in an electronic shopping
context can be considered both as purchasers
of goods and as users of information
technology. Specifically, such consumers
exchange information by using the Internet
as a communication medium. For this
reason, we think the nature of the Internet
shopping environment should be explicitly
taken into consideration in research on
consumers of electronic commerce.
The adoption and diffusion of cyber-
shopping has givenmore power to consumers.
Since the consumers' active attitude plays a
key role in Internet shopping, customers
usually control lots of initiatives (Schwartz,
1997). For thisreason, companies try to attract
and support consumers by providing broad
alternatives of goods, incentives and other
services. In this context, it is suggested that
interaction with consumers from the stage of
product development to the provision of
integrated customer services is suggestedto is
a major source of success in this business
(Cronin, 1997).
The importance of the consumer
satisfaction issue has become the focus of
interest because of the heightened role of the
consumers' active response. In this vein, we
focused on consumers' level of satisfaction
with Internet shopping. Indexes for
consumer satisfaction have been developed
and studied in the field of marketing, and
indexes for users' information satisfaction
have been developed in the field of MIS.
However, an index for electronic commerce
consumers has not been developed and
tested. We believe that user-consumers'
behavior within an online shopping
environment should show different patterns
from those within the existing off-line
shopping environment. For this reason, we
specifically focused on the development of a
user-consumer satisfaction index in an
Internet commerce environment. The
primary objective of this research is, thus, to
develop a way of measuring the level of
satisfaction of electronic commerce
consumers. Then we analyzed the validity of
the suggested index. To examine the
theoretical and logical quality of the index,
we also examined the relationship between
the level of consumer satisfaction as
measured by our suggested index and the
level of purchasing intention. We think the
results of the study will also provide useful
insights for managers of Internet shopping
mall businesses.
Conceptual background
Index development process
For the development of a measure, it is
important to view index design and
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[ 400 ]
Industrial Management &
Data Systems
101/8 [2001] 400±405
#MCB University Press
[ISSN 0263-5577]
Keywords
Internet, Shopping,
Consumer attitudes,
Measurement
Abstract
Customers in an Internet shopping
environment actually play dual
roles. One is the role as a
customer in a shopping place, and
the other is the role as a user of
information technology. In both
cases, the level of satisfaction is
of great concern. In this vein, a
way of measuring the satisfaction
level that takes both roles into
account is needed. However, in
past research indexes for
consumer satisfaction and
indexes for user information
satisfaction have been developed
separately in the fields of
marketing and management
information systems. Because of
this lack of interaction between
the two streams of research, an
index for electronic commerce
consumers that has its base in the
dual roles has not been developed
and tested. In this research, an
instrument for measuring
electronic commerce consumer
satisfaction was proposed and
validated using a sample of over
400 customers. The relationship
between the index and
consumers' purchasing intention
was also examined.
This work was supported by
the Brain Korea 21 Project
in 2000.
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