Exploring Relationships Between e-Tailing Website Quality and Purchase Intention

Abstract

Attracting and retaining customers in an online environment is crucial to remain a successful retail business. Although purchase intentions have been recognized as a major factor affected by the website quality, few studies have examined how initial purchase intention affects the continued purchase intention. We want to further investigate the relationship between website quality (system, information, and service) and purchase intention categories with perceived risk as the moderator. We developed a questionnaire and three different websites for a fictional office furniture retail business to aid our investigation. The questionnaire was distributed to university students in a large U.S metropolitan city. We received 256 valid responses. Our empirical results confirmed that information and service quality of the e-tail website positively impact initial purchase intentions, and consequently continued purchase intention. Of the three website quality variables measured, the perceived risk seems to have an adverse effect only on the relationship between system quality and purchase intentions. Based on our findings, e-tailing websites should consider focusing more on website quality factors such as responsiveness, utility, reliability, availability, and the content of the website as well as the service provided such as customization, users feedback and rating, and good tracking of user complaints.