Signaling effect of website usability on repurchase intention

•Signaling goes beyond initial purchase to influence repurchase intention.•Website interface usability signals after-sale service quality.•Expectation confirmation of signaled service quality affects repurchase intention. After-sale service quality is a key to differentiating an online seller from numerous others and attracting returning customers. However, new customers cannot readily discern the quality of unfamiliar sellers. Sellers often try to reduce the information asymmetry and signal their quality by ensuring good website interface usability, considering that the website is the main point of contact with online shoppers. Most research on signaling has focused on its pre-purchase effects. Although researchers have argued that signaling could affect future purchase decisions, how signaling influences repurchase intention has not been detailed. This study proposes a model of the influence based on the signaling theory and expectation-confirmation model. The model posits that a signal influences an online shopper’s expectation and the expectation-confirmation subsequently determines repurchase intention. The model was tested with pre-purchase and post-purchase data collected in a two-stage survey and analyzed with structural equation modeling. Findings indicate that signaling goes beyond the pre-purchase stage of initial purchase to influence repurchase intention. This indicates that signaling has longer-term effect than that typically examined in signaling research and further research on the effect is needed. For practice, the findings indicate that online sellers need to send realistic signals to attract returning customers.