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TopIntroduction
The COVID-19 outbreak has altered our lives. The enforcement of lockdowns and self-isolation has decreased companies’ revenues in many different sectors, leading to bankruptcies and the loss of many jobs. Online technology has helped in several cases, offering solutions for entertainment, workout, education, communication with others, shopping, and working from home. According to recent surveys, Internet sales have increased more than 100% in many countries during the last year, as a result of the pandemic (ContactPigeon, 2020; ELTRUN, 2020). The sectors of consumer electronics and food & drink present the highest rise.
This rapid growth of online shoppers, along with the emergence of constantly new e-commerce websites, raises issues regarding customers’ satisfaction, a vital concern for repurchase intention, word of mouth, and website revisit (Rita et al., 2019). Companies selling their products and services online need to diversify from the competition, by enhancing the e-shoppers’ experience. Electronic service quality has proven to be a crucial factor affecting customers’ satisfaction and trust (Hallencreutz & Parmler, 2021; Rita et al., 2019).
Thus, in this study, we focus on evaluating the electronic service quality of e-shops during COVID-19 lockdown in Greece. The objectives of this study are:
• To weight and rank the dimensions and sub-dimensions that affect electronic service quality, based on the E-S-QUAL model.
• To evaluate thee shops of the top coffee-chains in Greece.
The contribution of our study is threefold. Firstly, our research provides a ranking between e-service quality items in the cultural environment of Greece. Service quality dimensions differ between countries (Ladhari, 2010), creating the need to examine the importance of the E-S-QUAL model items in different contexts. Secondly, we apply a multi-criteria decision-making approach based on AHP and TOPSIS to evaluate and rank the e-shops on one of the most positively affected e-commerce sectors during COVID-19 lockdown, food & drink. The findings reveal the coffee-chain website that can be considered as the benchmark in that area. Finally, our study’s results enrich the literature and provide insight to managers and web developers regarding the e-service quality items they should consider more during the implementation of e-shops.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The second section presents a brief overview of service quality and specifically the E-S-QUAL model used in this study. The third section describes the research methodology, based on AHP and TOPSIS. The fourth section discusses the study’s findings enriched by sensitivity analysis and finally, the last section offers conclusion remarks and implications.
TopLiterature Review
Service quality, which is defined as the global judgment, or attitude, relating to the superiority of the service (Parasuraman et al., 1988) has been studied in many types of research (Akroush et al., 2021; Suhartanto et al., 2019). Customer satisfaction, loyalty, and trust are some of the outcomes of service quality (Akroush et al., 2021; Dalbehera, 2020). To measure the quality of service, many instruments have been developed. Among them, SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al., 1988) is the most widely used.
The evolution of the world wide web and the transition of traditional business to online environments has led to the development of new instruments, capable of measuring electronic service quality. Examples of these newly developed scales are the following:
• WebQual, with three dimensions and five factors (Barnes & Vidgen, 2000).
• SITEQUAL, with four dimensions and nine items (Yoo & Donthu, 2001).
• WebQualTM, with twelve dimensions (Loiacono et al., 2002).
• eTailQ, with four factors (Wolfinbarger & Gilly, 2003).
• e-SERVQUAL, with seven dimensions (Zeithaml et al., 2002).
• E-S-QUAL, with four dimensions and twenty-two items (Parasuraman et al., 2005).
• e-TransQual, with five dimensions (Bauer et al., 2006).
• PeSQ, with four dimensions (Cristobal et al., 2007).
• The hierarchical model, with four dimensions and sixteen attributes (Blut et al., 2015).