How Good is Your Shopping Agent? Users' Perception Regarding Shopping Agents' Service Quality

How Good is Your Shopping Agent? Users' Perception Regarding Shopping Agents' Service Quality

Calin Gurau
Copyright: © 2009 |Pages: 14
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-978-6.ch010
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Abstract

The use of online shopping agents has increased dramatically in the last 10 years, as a result of e-commerce development. Despite the importance of these online applications, very few studies attempted to identify and analyse the main factors that influence the users’ perception regarding the service quality of online shopping agents, and consequently, the elements that determine the users’ choice of online shopping agents. The present study attempts to fill this literature gap, identifying on the basis of primary data analysis, the various circumstantial or personal factors that can determine the choice of a specific searching strategy and shopping agent.
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Introduction

The rapid development of the Internet in the last 10 years has had a profound impact on traditional marketing paradigms and practices (see Table 1), because of three specific and co-existent characteristics that differentiate it from any other communication channel:

Table 1.
The new marketing paradigm shift determined by the Internet. Source: Kiani (1998)
From ToSources
One-to-Many Many-to-Many
communication communication
model model Hoffman and Novak (1996)

Mass Marketing Individualised Marketing Martin (1996)

Monologue Dialogue Blattberg and Deighton (1996)

Branding Communication Martin (1996)
Supply-side Demand-side
thinking thinking Rayport and Sviokla (1995)

Megabrand Diversity Martin (1996)

Centralised market Decentralised market Blattberg et al. (1994)

Customer as a target Customer as a partner McKenna (1995)

Segmentations CommunitiesArmstrong and Hagel III (1996)

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