Elektronic service quality perceptions: A cross-cultural comparison of England and Turkey

Nowadays, internet usage has become an essential part of our lives. With the widespread of the internet usage, electronic commerce activities have press forwarded. Therefore, many companies and organizations providing services have had to expand their activities in the virtual environment. Hence, it has become important for these companies to determine the quality dimensions of the websites and how their customers perceive these dimensions. In the service sector where customers are from different cultures, different perceptions of quality occur. These perceptions vary in many points from the individual's cognitive processes to interaction with social life, from sociology to education. From this point of view, this study was conducted to examine international consumers with different cultural structures. Accordingly, the main purpose of the study is; to compare e-service quality, e-satisfaction and e-loyalty of the consumers in Turkey and in the UK, and to reveal the geographical and cultural differences in the perceptions of the international expansion of e-commerce. The data for the study is gathered via e-mail, from the internet users who have made a purchase from Amazon.com from Turkey and the UK. In total, 1233 surveys were considered acceptable for data analysis. SEM was used to test the conceptual model, and the path analysis was used to test the hypotheses. In conclusion; privacy, efficiency and responsiveness dimensions has affected significantly the overall quality of e-service of the participants both in Turkey and in the UK. For British participants, the communication dimension has been identified as an important factor affecting e-satisfaction.The relationship between overall e-service quality and e-satisfaction has been found to be positively significant for both countries. While a significant relationship between overall e-loyalty and e-services could not be found in the Turkey sample, a positive relationship was determined in the UK sample. Global e-retailers that appeal to the customers who have adopted different cultural structures may use the dimensions determined by this study, in order to provide outstanding service in the international market.