A Study On The Impact Of Service Quality On Trust In The C2C Environment

In recent years, C2C e-commerce developed rapidly. In spite of the encouraging results, however, the lack of consumer trust is the biggest obstacle that C2C e-commerce faced with, therefore, how to build and increase consumer trust in C2C e-commerce has become the key point to the development of online shopping. Because of the unique characteristics of online shopping, e-service quality is not only a major competitive advantage of online sellers, but also an important factor for online sellers to establish and maintain relationships with consumers. Therefore, service quality and trust have close linkages in C2C e-commerce. But the researches that are relevant to the relationship of e-service quality and e-commerce at home and abroad are almost blank. This study focuses on e- service quality and explores the impact of service quality on trust at different stages in the C2C environment.Based on the summary of previous researches on service quality and trust, this paper establishes the dimensions of e- service quality including the process quality, outcome quality and recovery quality by employing small-scale interviews and brainstorming. What's more, the measurement scale of C2C e-service quality and the model of the relationship between e-service quality and trust are developed. In addition, this paper also compares the influence of e-service quality on trust at different stages. The data is collected through both online and offline methods. By using the statistical software of LISERL8.70 and SPSS16.0, exploratory factor analysis, descriptive analysis, CFA analysis, reliability analysis, and regression analysis are conducted to test the proposed model.The results reveal that C2C e-commerce service quality is composed of process quality, outcome quality and recovery quality. The process quality of service includes 9 dimensions: store design, information availability, information quality, professionalism, size, popularity, reasonableness of price, responsiveness and relationship maintenance. The outcome quality of service includes two dimensions: quality assurance and completion of goods. The recovery quality of service is a one-dimensional variable with the name of compensability in this study. The factors that impact the initial trust are primarily the process quality of service including store design, information quality, professionalism, popularity, reasonableness of price and responsiveness. The factors that have influence on the continuing trust are responsiveness and relationship maintenance of the process quality of service, the quality assurance and completion of goods of the outcome quality of service and the compensability of the recovery quality of service. Based on these research findings, this study makes some suggestions for the improvement of the service quality and further development of online stores.