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ProcediaComputer
Procedia ComputerScience
Science122
00 (2017)
(2017)1016–1023
000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

Information Technology and Quantitative Management (ITQM2017)

Investigating E tailer's perceived Website Quality using

Analytical Hierarchy Process Technique
Anjali Pathaniaa, Gowhar Rasoolb*
a,
Assistant Professor, School of Business Studies, Central University of Jammu, J&K, 180001, India
b
Assistant Professor, School of Business Studies, Central University of Jammu, J&K, 180001, India

Abstract
In the global competitive world, the internet is empowering consumers to purchase online and make comparisons in real
time. Thus, e-commerce players have been continuously accentuating upon developing strategies to improvise their website
service quality. This paper takes Analytical Hierarchy Process approach to measure the website service quality referred to
as AHP-WEBQUAL (AHP-WQ). It attempts to measure the customer judgment towards different criteria that define
website service quality. It also applies this judgment to identify customer preferences towards existing e-commerce
websites. Amongst, WEBQUAL 4.0 dimensions as considered in the present study, Indian customers perceive usage to be
most significant website quality dimension followed by information quality and service interaction quality. The research
adds new domain of knowledge for practitioners and academicians by proposing a novel application of AHP which can be
used to measure website service quality of multiple e-commerce companies.
©
© 2017 The Authors.
2017The Authors. Published
Published by
by Elsevier
Elsevier B.V.
B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 5th International Conference on Information Technology
Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the organizers of ITQM 2017
and Quantitative Management, ITQM 2017.
Keywords: WEBQUAL; Analytical Hierarchy Process; Customer satisfaction; E-commerce

1. Introduction

Creating and crafting better customer experience can help the companies to carve a distinguished image in
the minds of consumers [10]. A vital factor that helps differentiate one retail store from another competing
retailer is Service Quality [16] and in that similar fashion online retailers/e-tailers have to maintain the quality
of their websites for attaining new customers and retaining their existing customers. Retailers audit mechanism
of the online shopping platform is an important mechanism to promote consumers' trust which improves the
overall service quality and increases the repeat purchasing [18]. Newer technologies like big data/predictive
analytics, internet of things suggest that the shopping processes are on the verge of a quantum leap [9]. The

* Corresponding author. Tel.:+91 9419653775.

E-mail address:[email protected].

1877-0509 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 5th International Conference on Information Technology and
Quantitative Management, ITQM 2017.
10.1016/j.procs.2017.11.468
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internet is empowering consumers to purchase online and make comparisons in real time. This facilitation of
internet to execute and process business transactions online led to the development of e-commerce [7]. E-
commerce is of recent origin but since inception e-commerce has been growing exponentially with India being
no exception. The internet user base has tremendously increased from 2.92 billion in 2014 to 3.42 billion in
2016 [11]. With over 460 million internet users, India is the second largest online market [24]. Reasons for
such an increase can be seen as internet penetration, changing lifestyles and segments. Segments of books,
electronics and apparel have been the main contributors so far [6]. The e-commerce players have been
continuously accentuating upon developing strategies to improvise their website service quality. E-tailing gives
exposure to retail assortments through a digital interface and visual design decisions/website appearance
become critical for influencing consumer reactions, thus, online environments can be more attention
demanding [12]. [15] illustrated that it is inevitable for a service firm to compare its sources of competitive
advantage with its competitors when developing priorities for service improvement. On the other hand, factors
such as appearance, accessibility, communication, trust, availability are equally applicable to e‐commerce as
they are in physical services [5]. The lack of human interaction in e-service delivery has further increased the
challenges for the online players [5]. There are numerous studies on the dimensions, measures and attributes of
e-service quality and different scales have been proposed to measure website service quality [4]. [2] developed
WEBQUAL 4.0, which is a commonly used scale to measure the website quality of online shopping site [1].
However, it is pertinent to mention that not many studies are found to have used AHP approach for
understanding and prioritising the WEBQUAL dimensions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the
customer judgments towards the WEBQUAL dimensions of e-service quality using WEBQUAL 4.0 as
suggested by [2]. Further, this paper proposes an empirical framework to measure website service quality
using AHP, which provides fresh insight into the dimensions of e- commerce website service quality.

2. Review of Literature

E-tailing can be defined as selling products and service using the internet. Services delivered with internet as
a medium, qualifies to be an e-service [27]. E-business covers activities ranging from email to e-enabled supply
chain management [17]. [14] first identified service quality as an important measure of Web site success. At
present, there is no common consensus among researchers with regard to the concept of e-SQ. While some
researchers have focused their studies on the quality of the website [13] while other researchers have taken
larger ambit of e-service quality into account and focused on services delivered through other modes than
websites [25]. Different authors have studied a range of factors to determine website service quality. [26] have
considered efficiency, reliability, fulfillment, privacy, responsiveness, compensation, security, communication
and contact as parameters of website service quality. [5] One of the recognized studies on website service
quality have taken parameters like website appearance, communication, accessibility, credibility, understanding
and availability. Ease of use, appearance, linkage, structure, content, efficiency, reliability, communication,
security, incentive and customer support have been considered as major parameters [22]. [8] have taken website
design, reliability, security and customer service. WEBQUAL has broadly been classified as Customer service
quality & Online system quality [5].
Though there is plethora of literature on website service quality which highlights various dimensions for
measuring the same, however, there are limited studies which have attempted to examine the relative
importance of various dimensions of website service quality as per customer perception. Further, there are very
few studies which have applied AHP as a technique for measuring the gap between star performers and the
competitors in the market. Therefore, the present study was conducted to address the above research gaps with
following objectives:

• To identify the critical website service quality dimensions.

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• To measure the perceived customer judgment towards the website service quality dimensions.
• To measure the perceived customer satisfaction count towards the leading e-commerce companies in India.
• To propose AHP-WQ framework for gap analysis.

3. Strategic Website Service Quality Approach: A conceptual framework

AHP technique as developed by [19-21] was applied in the present study to examine the complex multi
criteria decision problem of achieving high website service quality. Exploring the vast practicality of AHP
technique, [3] conducted a research study in which AHP-SQ approach was devised to measure service quality
and was illustrated on service quality of restaurants using RATER service dimensions.
For the purpose of the study, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method as given by [19] was applied in
order to develop a framework that depicts the relative importance of criteria which are website service quality
dimensions (WEBQUAL 4.0: Usage, Information Quality and Service Interaction Quality) and specify
customer satisfaction for e-commerce websites under study (Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon) as shown in
figure 1.

Fig.1. Website Service Quality Framework

Figure 1 clearly decomposes the complex decision problem of website service quality into two levels: Level
1 depicting website service quality dimensions (criteria) and Level 2 depicting e-commerce website
(alternatives). The level 1 was addressed by assignments of customer judgment weights through pairwise
comparisons whereas level 2 of hierarchy was addressed by assignment of customer satisfaction counts for
each alternative duly considering the significance and respective contribution of each website quality
dimension.

4. Methodology

In this study, AHP method was applied in order to approach the complex problem of achieving high website
service quality by e-commerce companies. While applying AHP technique, the respondents were asked to do
pairwise comparisons one at a time of website service quality dimensions as well as e-commerce websites by
rating on a scale of 1 to 9 towards both dimensions being compared by using questionnaire.

4.1 Questionnaire Design

In order to collect the data, the questionnaire was designed in two parts: Part one consisted of three
questions for pairwise comparisons of three website quality dimensions of WEBQUAL 4.0. A relative scale of
nine-point, similar to AHP instrument as proposed by [19] was adopted.
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A sample question of part one is shown in figure 2

Fig.2. Sample question from the questionnaire

Similarly, part two of the questionnaire consisted of three questions for pairwise comparisons of three e-
commerce websites under present study (Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon) with respect to each dimension,
using similar nine-point relative scale of measurement.

4.2 Sampling

Over a 5 week period, the data was collected by means of a survey conducted amongst researcher controlled
sample of 90 post graduate students engaged in shopping online through variety of e-commerce websites. For
the purpose of present study, data was collected with reference to Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon since they are
the structured marketplaces with combined Gross Merchandise Value of more than 13,500 crores. The sample
size of 90 students was considered appropriate for AHP and after checking for inconsistencies, 76 responses
were processed. The students in the sample were distributed among various sectors as PG courses: MBA (HRM)
(50 per cent); MBA (Tourism) (30 per cent); and MBA (Supply chain) (20 per cent). The age group of the same
was between 22-25 years, Males 43% and Female 57%.

5. Data analysis using AHP

AHP technique as given by [19-21] was applied in following seven steps which has been referred to as
“analytic hierarchy process for website service quality” (“AHP-WQ”) in this study and the data collected from
the respondents was analysed using Super Decision software and SPSS. The steps followed in AHP-WQ were:

Step1: Capturing customer judgments towards website service quality dimensions through pairwise
comparison.
Customer judgments through pair wise comparison were collected using the first part of the questionnaire.
Data collected was used to examine the ‘Level 1: Website service Quality Dimension’ of the hierarchy
framework for perceived website service quality as depicted in figure 1. These pairwise comparisons were
entered to super decision software in order to generate the Level 1 matrices for Website Service Quality
Dimension. The Level 1 matrices were also copied to Microsoft excel for further data analysis.

Step2: Capturing customer preferences towards existing websites using pairwise comparison.
In this step, the customer preferences through pair wise comparison were collected using the second part of
the questionnaire. The data collected was used to examine the ‘Level 2: Customer preference of E-commerce
websites in India with respect to each website service quality dimension.
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Step 3. Response consistency check.

The concept of consistency index and eigen values was highlighted by [19] in order to identify the
inconsistent responses. The CI and eigen values were used to calculate consistency ratio CR which reflects the
inconsistency of response for each comparison matrix. For the purpose of this study, as mentioned in the
research by [23], all responses whose consistency ratio was below 15% were retained and the remaining were
dropped from further data analysis.

Step 4. Calculating customer judgment weights assigned to the website service quality dimensions by each
respondent
All the acceptable consistent responses in form of Level 1 matrices were copied to Microsoft excel wherein
they were clubbed together using geometric mean to develop one consolidated Level 1 matrix for Website
Service Quality Dimension. Further, this consolidated level 1 matrix values were normalised by dividing each
value of the column by its respective column sum. Subsequently, the average of row wise normalised values
were calculated for each dimension to derive it’s priority vector referred as consolidated ‘customer judgment
weights’. The similar process of normalisation and calculation of priority vector was followed for each
respondent’s level 1 matrix. Due to constraint of space, only one such matrix of one of the respondents is as
shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Respondent judgment weights

Information Service Priority Vector
Level 1 Matrix Usage
Quality Interaction Quality (Judgement Weight)
Usage 1 6 7 0.754545455
Information Quality 0.166666667 1 2 0.153535354
Service Interaction
Quality 0.142857143 0.5 1 0.091919192
1.30952381 7.5 10
Note: The above matrix depicts the customer judgment weights assigned to the website service quality dimensions by one random
respondent.

Step 5. Calculate customer satisfaction count assigned to websites under study by each respondent.
The same procedure was adopted to compute the customer satisfaction counts assigned to e-commerce
websites under study by analysing the consolidated level 2 matrix for preferred e-commerce websites in India
with respect to each dimension. Further, these values were used to generate a global vector depicting overall
preference ranks of the e-commerce websites keeping in mind the weightage of the WEBQUAL. The similar
process of normalisation and calculation of global vectors and ranks was followed for each respondent’s level 2
matrix. Due to constraint of space, only one such matrix of one of the respondents is shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Respondent Satisfaction count assigned to e-commerce websites

Information Service Global Vector

Level 2 Usage
Quality Interaction Quality (Satisfaction Rank
Matrix (0.75)
(0.15) (0.09) Count)
Flipkart 0.221324 0.297258 0.272099 0.237649 2
Snapdeal 0.093382 0.163781 0.119939 0.106632 3
Amazon 0.685294 0.538961 0.607962 0.655719 1
Note: The above matrix depicts the customer satisfaction assigned to the website service quality by one random respondent only.
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Step 6. Computing mean and standard deviation of customer judgment weights and customer satisfaction
count for all the respondents.
The results synthesised in step 4 and 5 were used further to compute mean and standard deviation of
customer judgment weights assigned to WEBQUAL dimensions and customer satisfaction count towards
Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon as shown in table 3 and 4. The company with the highest rank or satisfaction
count was regarded as ‘Star Performer’ in the market.

Step 7. Website service quality gap analysis.

The last step highlights the practical implication of AHP-WQ where in the companies can examine their
performance in comparison to star performer in the market with respect to WEBQUAL dimensions using
Website Service Quality Gap Analysis (WSQGapd). In order to illustrate the gap analysis, the examining e-
commerce company has been considered as Flipkart.

WSQGapd = SCdS - SCdE (1)

where,
WSQGapd = website service quality gap with respect to dimension d;
SCdS = customer satisfaction count for the Star performer in market with respect to
dimension d;
SCdE = customer satisfaction count for the examining company with respect to
dimension d
Also, gap direction depicted through ‘+ve’ value of WSQGapd indicates that star performer company is
ahead of the company being examined with respect to given dimension d. Therefore, the right strategy has to be
formulated by the examining company to bridge this gap.
Gap direction depicted through ‘-ve’ value of WSQGapd indicates that the company being examined is
ahead of the star performer company with respect to given dimension d. Therefore, appropriate strategy has to
be formulated by the examining company to sustain the present position in the market.
Gap direction depicted through ‘0’ value of WSQGapd indicates that the company being examined is
performing equally well as the star performer company with respect to given dimension d.

6. Findings and Discussion

‘AHP WQ’ technique was applied to understand the relative importance of dimensions of website service
quality as perceived by the customers. The data analysis revealed that amongst WEBQUAL, the most
significant website service quality dimension is usage (0.46) followed by information quality (0.33) and service
interaction quality (0.21) as depicted through mean customer judgment weights in table 3.

Table 3. Mean Judgment weights for Website Service Quality Dimensions

Website Service Quality Dimension Mean Customer Judgement Weights Dimension rank
Usability 0.46 1
Information Quality 0.33 2
Service Interaction Quality 0.21 3

Also, as shown in table 4, the customer preferences towards e-commerce websites under study clearly
depicts that Flipkart was preferred over Amazon and Snapdeal in terms of usage. Whereas, Amazon was
regarded as a star performer in the market in terms of information quality and service interaction quality, thus
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making it most preferred company in terms of website service quality.

Table 4. Mean Satisfaction Count and Website Service Quality Gap Analysis

Gap
Website Service Quality Dimension Flipkart Snapdeal Amazon WSQGapd
Direction
-ve
Usability 0.42 0.21 0.37 - 0.05
(1) (3) (2) SD= 0.32

0.31 0.28 0.41 0.10 +ve

Information Quality
(2) (3) (1) SD=0.51
+ve
0.31 0.27 0.42 0.11
Service Interaction Quality
(2) (3) (1) SD=0.54
Overall customer satisfaction
Count 0.3606 0.2457 0.3937

Overall rank (2) (3) (1)

As mentioned above, that in order to illustrate the gap analysis, Flipkart was considered as the examining
company, thus table 4 clearly suggests that Flipkart must develop an appropriate strategy to enhance customer
satisfaction towards it’s website’s information quality as well as service interaction quality. However, since
Flipkart excelled the star performer in terms of usage, it has to retain that position by devising a correct strategy.
Similarly, Amazon must work on its website usage for enhancing customer satisfaction towards its website
quality, since in the present intense competitive e-commerce business environment in India, sustenance of star
performer position can prove to be a challenging task. Also, Snapdeal needs to improvise by focusing on all
three dimensions of website service quality. More investment towards website maintenance for ensuring quality
can be fruitful for Snapdeal as it is anytime good idea for e-commerce companies to invest on their websites for
ensuring quality as it is the main medium to interact and provide service to their customers.

7. Implications, Limitations and Future Scope

The research adds new domain of knowledge for practitioners and academicians by proposing a novel
application of AHP which can be used to measure website service quality of multiple e-commerce companies.
It presents insights for e-commerce companies on strategizing for improving the website service quality by
highlighting the priorities of right website service parameters as per customers’ perception for sustaining in
emerging markets. Thus, adapting the AHP methodology in the manner proposed in this paper allows managers
to prioritize service dimensions of their website and to assess the deficiencies as perceived by customers in a
way that provides a strategic perspective in managing their website’s service quality. The paper explores the
limited set of criteria and alternatives to measure the website service quality which can be further extended and
can subsequently help in generalization of the results of the study. Although the results identify deficit in
specific service dimensions which require improvement, however, the present framework does not provide
guidance on an appropriate action plan to address the identified deficiencies. Further, the sample has been
restricted by the researchers; large sample across different demographics can be used in future research studies.
Sensitivity Analysis can be further carried out to understand the effect of changing dynamics of customer
judgments towards website quality dimensions.
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