An Investigation on the Linkage between Purchase Intention and Service Quality in the E-commerce Context

With the increasing popularity of online shopping, e-commerce is becoming more and more important for enterprises to obtain superior performance. The purpose of this study is to identify some key determinants impacting customer purchase intention in e-commerce context. Building on the relevant literature, this article proposed e-commerce serive quality (ESQ) as a primary construct to predict purchase intention. Questionnaires were distributed to senior undergraduate students from five universities or colleges in Nanchang, China. Structural equation modeling (SEM) method was used to assess the relationships of the research model. The findings confirm that ESQ affects purchase intention significantly. Notably, this study finds that the website design quality is a more important sub-construct than information quality and responsiveness quality in determining customers' purchase intention. According to the findings of the study, China's enterprises should focus more on the e-commerce website design so as to improve customer purchase intention.