The role of Customer experience in online retail quality: Investigating the effect of online customer experience on customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions

Abstract: Online retail is playing an ever increasing role in business today and one of the critical tasks in online retail management is the understanding of how to create an offering that would yield maximum value for the consumers and differentiate the retailer from competition. If an online retailer understands how the online retail offering is perceived and evaluated by customers, it becomes possible to identify how to manage these evaluations and influence them in a direction necessary for the retailer. The present research has been undertaken in an attempt to expand the currently existing measures of online retail quality by incorporating the concept of customer experience and identifying the wide range of attributes that are evaluated by consumers during their online shopping process. Specifically, the effect of customers’ evaluation of the online experience on customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions has been examined. As a result of the obtained findings, eight components of online customer experience have been identified. Website usability, followed by Fulfillment, Customer support, Security and Networking/customization were found to be the predictors of customer satisfaction in online retail, while Website usability and Fulfillment contributed to the prediction of customer loyalty intentions. A range of implications are drawn based on the obtained findings at the end of the present research.