The classification and importance of E‐S‐Qual quality attributes: an evaluation of online shoppers

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to classify and assess the importance levels of the quality attributes of E-S-QUAL measurement scale, aiming to focus on the most important attributes to improve. Design/methodology/approach - E-S-QUAL measurement scale is classified according to Kano's model and the relative importance levels of the E-S-QUAL quality attributes are revealed via analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The data of the study were gathered through a questionnaire, which consisted of four parts and was applied to 202 online shoppers in Izmir/Turkey. Findings - Almost all of the quality attributes are placed under one-dimensional category. Privacy dimension is found to be a high value-added attribute, whereas the least important attributes are found to be within the efficiency dimension. None of the quality attributes of E-S-QUAL are regarded as attractive attributes. Practical implications - This study is expected to attract the attention of practitioners on the most important quality attributes that affect customer satisfaction, which will help them reduce the time-consuming and heavy efforts on improving the e-service quality attributes that would not matter to the customers. The authors hold that the proposed evaluation of e-service quality measurement scales, in general, provides an effective and operational procedure to assess customer perception toward the quality of online service; so that firms can achieve higher levels of customer satisfaction through increasing the level of quality of their online services Originality/value - This study is expected to contribute to the literature, as being the primary study focusing on the classification of E-S-QUAL quality attributes through Kano's Model by determining the relative importance levels via AHP.