Comparing e‐service performance across industry sectors: Drivers of overall satisfaction in online retailing

Purpose - The online retail industry is enormous, covering a great assortment of products and services. Yet, little research has examined whether determinants of success in online retailing are similar or differ by industry sector. The purpose of this study is to examine industry sectors separately to distinguish drivers associated with overall satisfaction for the online consumers in those sectors. Design/methodology/approach - The paper uses ridge regression to examine how e-service quality dimensions are associated with overall customer satisfaction for several e-retailing sectors. Findings - While several e-service quality dimensions exhibit a similar impact across all sectors, several other dimensions exhibited sector-by-sector differences. The drivers that frequently differ across sectors include price perceptions, ease of returns and refunds, and privacy experience. Research limitations/implications - As an exploratory study, research opportunities and limitations derive from the public source of data, sample sizes within some of the sectors, and the ridge regression methodology. Practical implications - Related prior research examined individual e-retailing sectors, leading to scattered sets of findings that cannot be triangulated. The research allows for comparison by the manager, and presents empirical insights for managers in several e-retail sectors. Originality/value - This paper is one of only a few studies to examine a consistent set of e-service quality measures on a sector-by-sector basis. The paper is also unique in that it uses publicly available data sources to examine these relationships, providing managers with insights on how they might analyze such public data sets for their own usage.