Research In E-service

With the proliferation of the Internet in marketing, it has become clear that mere Web presence, as well as the information and sales functions of e-commerce, need to be supplemented by electronic service, or e-service. In fact, it has been suggested that as e-commerce is gradually advancing into the next phase, it is essential to accompany the focus on ‘‘high tech’’ with ‘‘high touch’’. The infusion of information and communication technology is changing the nature of the service encounter with far-reaching consequences for both service employees and customers. Furthermore, while technology providers play an increasingly important role in the e-service arena, the role of such third-party suppliers has been left largely under-researched. Do these companies practice what they preach? And, what happens when e-service measurement moves up the supply chain? Questions that have been left virtually unanswered in the literature thus far. Finally, for researchers the rise of e-services may necessitate the re-conceptualization of a number of established core concepts. The nature of customer evaluative judgments about e-services is likely to be contingent on the technological context. In other words, e-services present several research challenges, many of which have not been addressed in the academic literature. The purpose of the special issue is to generate discussion of and cutting-edge research about a rich variety of issues related to e-service. It contains an interesting blend of different research perspectives in order to better understand what is meant by ‘‘this thing called e-service’’. The central and most widely researched construct in the services domain has been service quality as perceived by customers. The first contribution, therefore, focuses on developing a measurement instrument for assessing Internet retail service quality. Janda, Trocchia and Gwinner have undertaken a two-step approach to identifying the underlying dimensions of this construct. First of all, in-depth interviews were conducted to uncover the various aspects involved in consumers’ assessment of the quality of their on-line shopping experience. Five dimensions are reported: performance, access, security, sensation and information. Subsequently, the reliability and validity of multiitem scales for these dimensions as well as the predictive power of the overall scale is assessed by means of a survey. While empirical nuances still have to be made, the results provide service researchers and practitioners with an in-depth insight in the nature of e-service quality. In the second article, Feinberg and Kadam relate a comprehensive set of eservice attributes to electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM) of retail Web sites. The authors take up the challenge of formulating the basic and essential question that service marketing practitioners so frequently confront researchers with: ‘‘What is the