Research On The Influencing Mechanism Of Service Quality Of E-commerce Platform On Brand Equity

With the rapid development of the Internet, and the network environment improved gradually, the netizen are rapidly expanding. The netizen are becoming online consumers because they are accustomed to obtain a variety of information from the Internet, which spawned a number of service brands of e-commerce platforms whose survival and development are based on the Internet. These service brands seek their own development and growth by providing consumers a great deal of information, goods and services by their shopping sites.Although the way shopping site encounters consumers opens a big gap from consumers to service provider, it narrows down the distance between consumers and service itself and increases accessibility of those services, which is different to physical stores. As a commercial brand, e-commerce platform will have fierce competition with other e-commerce platforms in the pursuit of growth and development process for consumers and transactions. This competition is actually brands competition, service brands of e-commerce platforms which serve as the bridge linking between the brand shopping sites and consumers, have been integrated into people’s lives and playing increasingly important role for both of them in the Internet era. As Internet service brands, competition among e-commerce platforms is mainly carried out around the theme of the service. A wealth of product information and application services is provided so that consumers can perceive service quality and value of e-commerce platforms from the online shopping experience. By reducing the risk perception, generating a sense of trust in the brand, e-commerce platform can gradually build a bond to consumers from emotional preferences and dependency, which embeds the brand awareness and association in the heart of consumers, and form into their attitudes and behaviors of loyalty to the brand. Therefore, the key to enhance brand competitiveness for e-commerce platforms can be done by attracting and maintaining consumer through designs to improve its service quality. In this study, we chose mechanism of the impact of e-service quality on brand equity as a research topic, to explore the mechanism of dimensions of e-service quality on brand equity of shopping sites from the theoretical and empirical aspects.Around the topic of this study, this dissertation solves two problems:No.1is the quality of service of e-commerce platform, which is the dimensions of the e-service quality; No.2, through what paths e-service quality of shopping website can has the impact on brand equity. Previous studies on the brand equity of shopping sites are mainly focused on customer value, brand relations, customer satisfaction and customer repurchase intention, few people research the relationship between customers perceived value and trust their impact on brand equity, it is rarely researched. Therefore, this dissertation studied the dimensions of e-service quality and its impact on brand equity of shopping website and influence paths to explore the relationship between them.Firstly, related literature review is done around e-service quality, customer perceived value, brand trust and brand equity. We analyzed the top15brand shopping sites which have the highest page view of Chinese consumers to form their features, combined to which the key question items of the dimensions of e-service quality were formed through group interviews were carried out. The five dimensions of e-service quality are determined by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis to determine as a basis for subsequent research.Secondly, this study built conceptual model around the impact mechanism e-commerce platform service quality on brand equity and proposed hypotheses based on the model. The model fitting and hypotheses testing were conducted by empirical testing. In this dissertation, based on the paradigm of "perception-attitude behavior" of the theory of consumer behavior, theoretical models and operating model were built. Through the analysis of mechanism hypotheses were proposed. Empirical analysis demonstrate that usability has a significant positive effect to customer perceived functional value and brand reliability; Responsiveness has a significant positive on effect perceived emotional value, brand reliability and brand intention; Fulfillment has a significant positive effect on perceived functional value, emotional value and brand reliability. Empathy has a significant positive effect on perceived functional value, emotional value, brand reliability and brand intention. Safety has a significant positive effect on functional value, brand reliability and brand intention. Usability effect is very the most of all, it illustrates that a simple-to-use shopping site has become the focus of consumers’functional requirements, shopping sites should consider more for customers, improve service interactions between two sides so as to improve customers perceived value and trust.Thirdly, the relationship among customer perceived value, brand trust and brand equity was also verified. The empirical study found that the dimensions of customer perceived value have dimensions of brand trust. Emotional value, brand reliability and brand intent have significant positive impact on brand equity (brand association and brand loyalty). Functional value has a significant positive effect on brand association, but not on brand loyalty. This conclusion also explains the utilitarian consumers repeatedly landing in to search and compare information from the shopping site whose function meets consumers’requirements well, and then do the consumer decision-making. When the other shopping sites were perceived with higher value, consumers are prone to generating brand switching behavior.Finally, based on empirical research findings, brand equity enhancing strategy was proposed focusing on the service quality of e-commerce platform. In this dissertation, shopping sites should conduct several aspects from the system quality, information quality, interaction ways and community building to develop service marketing strategies.The main innovation of this dissertation is the following:first, new research path was proposed. Not like previous studies that the impact of e-service quality on brand equity is only through customer perceived value, we found that another impact path brand trust the brand played an important role. It is the virtual contact between e-commerce platform and consumers that make consumers perceive brand value and generate brand trust, which simultaneously effect brand equity. Second, the relationship between e-service quality and brand trust was verified. That is to say, dimensions of service quality of e-commerce platforms have impact on dimensions of brand trust. Previous studies mainly focused on perceived brand value and consumer satisfaction, the impact of e-service quality on brand trust was not well researched. Third, the controversy relationship between perceived value and brand trust was solved based on e-commerce platforms. There was a controversy about the relationship between perceived value and trust. Some scholars believed it was the trust that affect the perceived value, some scholars believed the reverse. Customer perceived value and brand trust were measured based on e-commerce platforms, we validated that customer perceived value has a significant impact on brand trust though structural equation model. Fourth, the e-service quality scale fit for the Chinese scenarios was developed. Because of the big differences between Chinese and Western cultures, there were also significant differences between Chinese and Western consumers on behaviors of online consumption and decision-making. In this study, e-service quality scale was constructed and validated by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis based on the e-commerce platforms brand in China.