The Influence of Express Service Quality on Express Brand Satisfaction: Moderating Effect of Customer Experience on E-commerce Environment

Abstract

Nowadays, e-commerce has been developed rapidly because of the popularity of the internet, and online shopping has become an integral part of people’s lives. E-commerce not only has brought changes in the way of trading, but also leads to the growth of express delivery business. On the other hand, acting as an important support role for e-commerce, express delivery lays the foundation for the development of e-commerce. In the other word, e-commerce and express delivery are two industries that rely on and promote each other. However, the express delivery industry has also produced a lot of new problems to be solved in the e-commerce environment, such as consumer information security and logistics information fraud. As a result, these issues affect the consumer satisfaction of the express brands, and also pose a threat to the consumers’ evaluation of the shopping websites indirectly. Therefore, it is so essential for express industry to understand the factors that influence the express brand satisfaction in the e-commerce environment and to take measures to improve the quality of the express delivery services according to the key influential factors, so as to enhance the consumer satisfaction of the express brands. In this paper, we combine qualitative and quantitative methods. Firstly, assumptions are proposed and a theoretical model is built after having read a lot of related literature. Secondly, we design a questionnaire according to the unique characteristics of express services in China’s e-commerce environment with reference to some mature scales, and then issue the questionnaires to online shopping users. Finally, after questionnaires are collected and are processed, SPSS16.0 and AMOS18.0 statistical software is used to analyze the data. At the beginning, reliability and validity of questionnaires are analyzed, and then we verify the hypothesis with the structural equation model, and the final satisfaction model is constructed after constant adjusting and correcting. In the academia, there are so many papers about express brand satisfaction in the traditional business model and shopping website satisfaction in the e-commerce environment, but so little attention is paid to the factors influencing express brand satisfaction in the e-commerce environment. This paper reveals the relationships between factors of service quality and brand satisfaction in the express industry under current e-commerce environment, and for convenience, economy, timeliness and reliability are used to measure express service quality. It then develops a structural equation model （SEM） to describe those correlations and effects. The results show that timeliness and reliability of express during online shopping have a direct positive impact on the express brand satisfaction, and the reliability has the most significant influence on the express brand satisfaction. In addition, customer experience moderates the impact of express service quality positively on express brand satisfaction. This paper deepens the research on the customer experience and plays a guiding role in the improvement of service performance of the express delivery industry in the e-commerce environment. This paper also puts forward three improvement measures about how to promote the consumer satisfaction towards the express enterprises in the e-commerce environment. Firstly, express delivery companies should cooperate with the e-commerce companies intimately to ensure the timeliness and reliability of the express and create a harmonious relationship among e-commerce companies, express companies and customers. Secondly, express companies should pay more attention to the users’ experience management in the online shopping environment, including direct use experience and evaluation on the internet. Because of the high costs of direct experience and the convenience of the internet, consumers are more willing to choose the express brands indirectly through the evaluation of other consumers on the internet. Thirdly, express delivery companies have to manage the express franchisees strictly and regulate the operation and supervision of franchisees to prevent chaos like empty package”.