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Top1. Introduction
With the rapid, worldwide advancement in information communication technology (ICT) along with the popularity and ubiquity of the Internet, E-Commerce is getting stronger in the world with speedy economic trends (Castro, Meneses, & Moreira, 2013; Zhang, Deng, Wei, & Deng, 2012). As an approach, E-commerce is being promoted and being explained in order to reduce the monetary, energy, time and psychological transaction costs for customers while they are carrying out their shopping activities. E-Commerce technologies enable consumers to search for products, to receive personalized product recommendations, to evaluate and to order products through an online medium (Chircu & Mahajan, 2006).When individuals as well as organizations utilize Internet as a means of intermediary for trading products and services, it is defined as Electronic commerce (Armesh, Salarzehi, Yaghoobi, heydari, & Nikbin, 2010). While E-commerce offers businesses with opportunities to expand their scopes, there are notable obstacles that are being faced in online selling (Murphy & Tocher, 2011). Various disciplines have been studying the consumer shopping behaviour from long time ago (Joh, Arentze, & Timmermans, 2006).
There has been a fast trend of growth in online trading since E-commerce has emerged while it reached beyond the borders of countries all over the world (Daliri, Rezaei, & Ismail, 2014; Wu, 2013). The retailing industry is being differentiated from other industries and sectors due to the existence of steady and extensive interactions among staffs and clients (Porricelli, Yurova, Abratt, & Bendixen, 2014). Considering the high speed growth along with the influence and lifestyle changes in Malaysia, retailing and grocery retailers’ activities have been experiencing brisk and significant changes since the country’s independence in 1957 (Roslin & Melewar, 2000, 2001). Furthermore, the retailing sector in the Malaysian context has been transformed from extreme traditional grocery retail shops and styles into supermarkets, and then, it has been expanded into hypermarkets (Hassan & Rahman, 2012), and nowadays, it has changed to online retailing. Despite the influence of interest in shopping behaviours, there is a need for further investigations on how these behaviours are connected to the outcomes of satisfaction (Jack & Powers, 2013).
Considering the fact that E-commerce has been developed considerably in the last ten years, there are still growing concerns about the existing lack of privacy and trust in this area (Amin, Rezaei, & Tavana, 2015). Consequently, creating customer retention and satisfaction are one of the key objectives to be targeted for online retails in order to increase portability and to obtain and to maintain competitive advantage (Valvi & Fragkos, 2012). In an E-commerce setting, the loyal customers are considered extremely valuable to the company’s survival and its performance (Dina, Allard, Veronica, & Sandra, 2004). In today’s economic climate and competitive retail environment, the survival of businesses greatly depends on customers’ shopping experiences (Grewal, Levy, & Kumar, 2009). Simultaneously, the strength of the relationship between the time that was consumed and satisfaction levels highly depends on the length of each customers’ initial experience with the organization (Bolton, 1998; Daliri et al., 2014). Additionally, consumers with different backgrounds and characteristics have diverse edges which vary systemically among other customers’ groups at the same level of reported satisfaction and repurchase rates.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction: “A positive or negative reaction to a purchase decision or product after purchasing. The degree to which a consumer's expectations are fulfilled or surpassed by a product” (American Marketing Association, 2015).
Retailing: “A set of business activities which are carried out to accomplishing the exchange of goods and services for purposes of personal, family, or household use, whether performed in a store or by some form of non-store selling” (American Marketing Association, 2015).
Repurchase Intention: “The subjective probability that a customer will continue to purchase a product from the same online seller” or buying product/services again from same company ( Rezaei et al., 2014 ).
E-Commerce: A wide variety of Internet-based business models and various elements of the marketing mix to drive users to a website for the purpose of purchasing a product or service (American Marketing Association, 2015).
Trust: “The willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party” ( Rezaei et al., 2014 ).
Online shopping: “The online shopping process involves an exchange of time, effort and money for the receipt of products or services in a virtual store” ( Rezaei et al., 2014 ).
Buyer Intention: The subjective probability that a buyer's beliefs and attitudes will be acted upon in a purchasing framework (American Marketing Association, 2015).