Examining relations between service quality, trust and purchasing intention on electronic marketplaces in Turkey: Structural equation modeling application

With the developing of technology, the world has become globalized and distances are no longer matter. Undoubtedly, a significant share of the world's change falls into the discovery of the Internet. Methods of doing business, with the discovery of the Internet has undergone major changes. In the beginning, shopping on the phone, on the phone or even on television has now left its way to shopping with mobile phones, tablets, smart TVs. In Turkey e-commerce volume has also growth rapidly. The growth in e-commerce and e-marketplaces attract attention in Turkey's market. In 2015 Turkey's B2C and C2C volume was 24,7 billion TL, but in 2016 this volume increased to 30,8 billion TL. That means almost 25% growth in a year. According to this numbers e-commerce volume increased rapidly. Moreover, the ratio of e-marketplaces in e-commerce volume has been announced 3,8 billion TL and 5,2 billion TL respective for the years of 2015 and 2016. This numbers also show that e-marketplaces which can be assumed as the stars of the e-commerce are growing rapidly. So that we need to consider to this potential. These developments have introduced the concept of e-commerce in our lives. Along with the development of the technology, there have also been changes in the business model of e-commerce. One of the business models that emerged with this development is the platform business model. Nowadays, as an example of platform business model, we often hear the name of online e-marketplace or open market terms. The marketplaces, which are formed by bringing together a buyer and seller of an intermediary company, offer the opportunity to sell to both small traders and individual users, while also offering attractive opportunities to the customers. Despite attractive opportunities, the intention of customers to shop in their marketplaces is influenced in many ways. Trust is at the top of these factors. Of course, due to the nature of e-commerce there is a risky environment. Gaining trust in e-marketplaces is bit different. However, when we examining trust in e-marketplaces, we have to go a bit out of the concept of trust used in e-commerce. Because in the literature authors mostly focuses on a single concept of trust in e-commerce. The reason for this is due to the fact that it is a dyadic structure between buyer and seller. Dyadic construct implies two sides: seller and buyer. Yet, when we look at e-marketplaces, we see that the situation is not a dyadic but a triple structure which contains seller, intermediary and buyer. Buyers are facing with both by the seller at the marketplace and by the intermediary that builds and manages the marketplace. For this reason, it is necessary to examine the trust in the e-marketplace in two dimensions as the trust of the intermediary firm and the seller. In e-marketplaces customers mostly engage with sellers with whom they have little or no prior interaction. That unfamiliar relation causes risky enviroment. Feedback mechanisms are often confronted as one of the tools of corporate trust. It is ensured that the customer has an opinion about the seller with the seller rating on the site. Even if the customers have not made a single purchase from that seller before, they can have an idea about the past performance of the seller with the feedback score. In this way, intermediary try to gain buyers' trust through seller. Although the literature generally focuses on institutional trust, the e-service quality also has an effect on the trust of customers. Excellent e-service quality is an important subject for e-dealer. It is the factor that will enable them to attract more online customers and gaining competitive advantage. Efforts are being made to facilitate the decision process of customers with services such as live assistance and product return guarantees. On the market platforms, if the customer experiences a problem with such factors as product, delivery, security, privacy he or she will assume the platform of the marketplace as the dealer, even though it is the seller in charge of the process. For this reason, most of the business has a platform to provide a good experience for customers and help them make the purchase decision. While platform owners are providing services to customers, it is necessary to keep the sellers in the system under control and protect their customers. In a e-marketplace number of buyers and sellers must be balanced in order to be successful. Because if a marketplace doesn't have enough seller, customers won't be there as well and vice versa. For this purpose, we have developed a model from which we have examined the relationship between e-service quality, feedback mechanisms and intentions to buy, trust in intermediary, trust in sellers who are marketplace participants. The main purpose of our work is to monitor the effect of e-service quality on trust in the intermediary firm and to monitor the trust transfer from the intermediary firm to the sellers, and finally to how trust influences to purchasing intention. Beyond these purposes how feedback mechanisms effect on trust in a seller in e-marketplaces. The sub-dimensions of e-service quality consist of website design, reliability /fulfillment, customer service and privacy/security factors. These factors are important for our study. Because this factors' scope reach from shopping to delivery process. Reliability and normality of the data collected by the survey method After the analysis was carried out in the IBM SPSS program, the developed Structural Equation Model was tested in the AMOS program. According to the results of the analysis, both the trust in intermediary firm and the trust in seller are influential on the purchasing intention. In addition, e-service quality has been achieved as an important determinant of trust in online marketplaces. It has also been verified once again that the transfer of trust from the intermediary firm to the seller through the study. The purchasing intention of customers is influenced by the factors that build trust in the e-marketplace, the trust in the seller and the trust in the intermediary firm. It has also been verified that there is trust transfer from intermediary to sellers. That finding implies if the customer trusts the intermediary firm they will make a purchase from a seller they don't know. Results of our study also shows that e-service quality is one of the most important predictor of trust in e-marketplaces. When we consider the sub factors of e-service quality, reliability is the strongest predictor of e- service quality. If superior service quality is provided from the intermediary firm, the customer will be satisfied with it and customer will trust the platform owner. Hence trust in the intermediary will increase trust in sellers and the purchasing intention of the customers to purchase will be positively affected. Of course, dissatisfied, inadequate service quality will lead to the opposite of this situation. The nature of e-commerce will allow the customer to leave the marketplace and search for another platform or place for shopping. In online area finding alternatives is really easy and cheap. Feedback mechanisms, which are characteristic mechanisms of e- marketplaces, have been found to have a significant effect on trust in sellers. If intermediary provides fair feedback scores and comment which are describing sellers, customers will be informed correctly. It is important because most of buyers are reading comments about sellers before shopping. And they use this comment and feedback scores for eliminating the untrustworthy sellers.