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E-commerce is analogous to the pole star which is glowing bright contemporarily as it helps customers to get their desired brands across plethora of product categories with discounts by curtailing unnecessary hassles involved in traditional shopping. Only spot of concern is that the e-commerce business all around is still not profitable. This makes long term sustenance a challenging task which needs to be truncated. At present E-commerce is a bright star as mentioned above, and to remain so or to become a phenomenal force, marketers need to work out the profitability scenario by concentrating on various key variables.
One of the most significant economic trends of the past decade is the growing use of the Internet for expanding business by adoption of e-commerce to compete at the global level. Considering Asia pacific region internet penetration for the year 2017, the top position is taken by China with 731 million internet users and India takes second place with 462 million internet users (Statista, 2017). The number of Internet users in India is expected to reach 450-465 million by June, up 4-8% from 432 million in 2016, a report from the Internet and Mobile Association of India said. The report added that its forecast does not factor in the impact of demonetization, which gave a boost to digital and mobile transactions. The report said that the overall internet penetration in India is currently around 31%. This indicates that there is much good to happen in the name of e-business and e-transactions.
According to Worldpay projections (2016), India would take the world's second largest ecommerce market by 2034, thanks to huge surges in internet penetration, a swelling millennial population and the rising uptake of mobile phones. The study mentioned about trends that will make prophesy of India's e-commerce growth in coming next two decades. From the study it is noted that the market will reach to $63.7 billion by 2020. This colossal development will in turn open up plethora of opportunities for online traders. However, it is essential that marketers to claim their hope today to win over India's e-commerce population and maximize their growth. Leading companies such as Amazon and Alibaba have already laid their path to grab the India's budding e-commerce market as soon as possible.
Another major determinant driving e-commerce growth in India is the exponential rise in mobile phone users. India is the world's biggest consumer market for mobile phones with the price of data plans running two times cheaper than in China and three times cheaper than in the United States. India is expected to witness steep rise, especially amongst millennials because of cheaply available 4G network. Mobile shopping by young India is already responsible for sharp increases in India's online purchase expenditure and with 70 per cent of the population below the age of 35 millennials is expected to continue driving rapid digitization even further (Global Payments Report, 2016). Sanjeev Prashar et al. (2017) made an important suggestion stating that there is a need for online retailers to customize marketing and promotional strategies with respect to Indian markets.
In recent years, the rapid development of Internet and ecommerce has created a threshold for new business practices and economic models. With online shopping platform providers emphasizing more on the virtual experience, service quality - an important concept in real economy that influences customer satisfaction and consumer buying behavior – should also be valued by the sellers of online shopping. One area that a number of e-commerce businesses excel in is customer service. They marketers find ways to top the competition through better customer service. Better customer service means happier customers, which results in effective word-of-mouth advertising. As many studies say poor service quality accounts for 80 percent customer complaints about e-tailers (Dobie et al., 2001), there is need for integration of different variables that have an impact on consumer behavior.
Henceforth, this paper attempts to delineate the relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction and customer behavioral intentions in online-shopping environments.