Customer satisfaction is regarded as one determining factor in the success of businesses. Therefore, customer satisfaction is considered one of the most critical features that determine the success of activities conducted by online businesses for cross-border e-commerce.
Despite the significant importance of customer service satisfaction assessment, a specific and comprehensive method is not provided for managers of companies to measure it. For doing this, it is necessary to define terms such as customer satisfaction, identifying its dimensions and eventually the way of its conceptualization and measurement.
In this study, comprehensive exploratory analysis was employed to collect all the characteristics of customer satisfaction and adapt the comprehensive model of the e-service satisfaction model (ESM), while reviewing the theoretical base of customer satisfaction. The structure of this paper is as follows. The definition of customer satisfaction and its specifications are presented, and its dimensions are determined with the help of prior review articles in the first section. Then, the aspects of satisfaction and the related factors are determined through employing findings of researches that have been conducted on e-commerce users’ satisfaction, aiming to develop a survey instrument to assess the customer satisfaction with e-commerce. These factors are then categorized and reduced using exploratory factor analysis. Finally, an e-commerce satisfaction survey is developed. E-commerce satisfaction experts analyzed the validity of the content survey, and exploratory factor analysis was employed to ensure the validity of the instrument through discriminate and constructive tests.
The most significant feature of the present study is to provide an integrated theoretical service instrument by considering a range of factors, such as distinctive features of electronic commerce, aspects of satisfaction about e-commerce, and features that are common in e-commerce and traditional commerce that influence e-commerce satisfaction and application of the ESM in the context of e-commerce as a subsection of e-service. Contrary to different definitions of satisfaction that have been previously presented in the field of information systems [5,13-17,26-31], this article defines satisfaction is as the extent of users’ belief in meeting their needs and expectations.In this paper, the definition of customer satisfaction and its specifications were presented and its dimensions were determined with the help of previous review articles. Then, the aspects of satisfaction and the related factors were used based on the findings on e-commerce and e-service satisfaction in different studies to form a survey instrument that is practical for the evaluation of customer satisfaction with e-commerce. To achieve this, 36 aspects of customer satisfaction were extracted from studies that were previously conducted in the information systems field, and then, their aspects were categorized and reduced using exploratory factor analysis. Consequently, eight main factors were determined as constructs to measure how customers are satisfied with e-commerce, as articulated in ESM. As a result, an e-commerce satisfaction survey was developed. For this purpose, related items for each factor were investigated through a literature review, a new questionnaire was created, 12 experts helped to validate the content of the survey, the content-validity survey was conducted with the aid of 12 experts, the statistical significance level to calculate CVR was considered as 0.05, Cronbach’s alpha was calculated since it is considered the fittest internal consistency measure, factor analysis was performed since it is regarded as a statistical method to verify the construct validity by using principal component analysis with the method of varimax rotation, and subsequently structural equation modeling and path analysis were applied with the aid of SPSS AMOS version 24. The final survey instrument after performing the above-mentioned steps comprised solely 28 main items. In addition, it was approved that eight constructs, namely training, performance, user-friendliness, trust, usability, security, quality, and design, have a direct and significant influence on e-commerce satisfaction.
With the rapid improvement of e-commerce, customer satisfaction has been introduced as an important managerial aspect that needs to be assessed by the service provider in customers’ behavior. Performance that includes delivery, flexibility, availability, ease of use, fulfillment, processing, and being functional in practice; trust that mainly includes reliability, assurance, and credibility; usability that comprises web usability and efficiency; user-friendliness that is originally made of convenience and ease of use; a design that includes aesthetic design, navigation, customization, the appearance of the website, site attraction, site presentation, and layout and structure; security; quality and training are the most critical characteristics that determine the level of e-commerce satisfaction and that should be considered to offer a higher level of customer satisfaction with e-commerce. Findings indicated that performance, trust, usability, user-friendliness, design, training, security, and quality are the most important characteristics of e-commerce satisfaction that should be taken into consideration in order to have high customer satisfaction with e-commerce. Therefore, the e-service satisfaction model (ESM), which is presented in Figure 2, was verified and approved through a systematic statistical procedure and can be applied to evaluate customer satisfaction with e-commerce and e-service environments. However, the e-service satisfaction model (ESM) could be considered for the evaluation and assessment of customer satisfaction in other electronic version services, too, including e-banking, e-business, e-ticketing, e-gaming, and e-finance.
Although the conclusions of this research may be more attractive for service-centered firms, IT experts, e-service users, and other audiences can also find suitable information in sub-clusters of each section to assess service maturity. Therefore, identifying the customer expectation and filling the gaps will help to identify the level of customer satisfaction, and the findings of this research will be helpful for e-service policymakers as well as its users to improve customer satisfaction. The findings of this research lead to a platform that is beneficial for e-commerce providers to understand how to satisfy e-commerce users. The generated knowledge can be used by e-commerce service providers as a platform for how to increase the customer satisfaction with their service. Although attracting new customers is crucial for all marketing and sales managers, in some cases, strategies to make loyal and regular customers receive more attention among researchers and practitioners because the cost is one-fifth [82]. With careful strategy implementation by policymakers, agencies, and system developers, high-quality and secure e-services can be successfully implemented to increase customer satisfaction.