Management Information Systems - E-Commerce Service Failures - Assignment Example

Management Information Systems (Name) (Institution Affiliation) (Date) Question1. Prior to carrying out their study which was associated with E-commerce service failures, Tan, Benbasat and Cenfetelli (2016) discovered that despite the alarming failure rate exhibited by e-commerce transactions, little had been done with regard to finding out what contributed to the e-commerce service failures. Besides, no authoritative, empirical research had been carried out to determine the effect of the e-commerce service failures on the consumer’s satisfaction (Harris Interactive, 2006). Despite the various service failures in renowned online firms such as Amazon.com, very few scholars had bothered to find out the impact of e-commerce service failures on online shoppers. Besides, a significant number of studies that have been carried out have considerably emphasized on the impact of service failure on offline transactions, whereby the customers have to visit a store to make purchases or to be served (Tan, Benbasat and Cenfetelli, 2016). As such, the authors found it necessary to carry out a study that would cover the gaps as mentioned earlier. In other words, they felt that an in-depth appreciation of electronic commerce service failures was essential to stem the wave of patron loss ubiquitous even among refined on-line business such as Amazon.com and Netflix. Tan, Benbasat and Cenfetelli (2016) explored the electronic service failures in their study with the primary purpose of conducting an exploratory study of the formation as well as the effect on e-commerce service failure on online consumer behaviour. Importantly, the authors wanted to find out what the current e-commerce are as well as how they manifest on electronic commerce websites. They also wanted to found out how various types of electronic commerce service failures impact consumers’ evaluation of electronic commerce websites. In their paper, Tan, Benbasat and Cenfetelli (2016) argue that consumers’ expectations of electronic commerce websites often create the basis under which evaluation regarding service performance is developed or formulated. Accordingly, e-commerce Service failures have more often than not been associated with failures in offline contexts, which is significantly wrong. They argue that the offline and online services are often different in context and as such, their failures cannot have a similar impact on the consumer’s post-purchase behaviour. Even though service failures in both offline and online scenarios are often associated with consumers’ evaluations of service delivery negatively going against their expectations, they involve distinct transactions as the former allows the customer to get physically in touch with the organization while the latter involves virtual contact (Bhattacherjee, 2001). With all the aforementioned aspects in mind, the authors wanted to dig further and understand the impact of e-commerce service failure on the consumers’ post purchase-mannerism. In their quest to carry out a study on e-commerce service failure, Tan, Benbasat and Cenfetelli (2016) posited that the current empirical studies were inductively derived and also lacked a theoretical foundation or basis. Consequently, this is the reason past classification studies associated with service failures were not in a position to identify the consequences for failure dimensions as far as e-commerce service failure are concerned. The authors posit that a majority of the studies often treated failure as a unidimensional construct considering the multifaceted nature of e-commerce service failure. As Tan, Benbasat and Cenfetelli (2016) posit, much of the previous studies of service failure consequences revolved around the offline environment hence such consequences when conceptualised in these studies cannot reflect the contextual uniqueness related to e-commerce transactions. More aggravatingly, a close analysis of a considerable number of the service failures studies closely related to the information systems discipline indicate that they are disproportionate (Colgate& Norris, 2001). It is with all the above-delineated reasons as well as aspects that the authors found it worth exploring electronic service failures in their study. Question 2 Notably, at the nascent stages of their studies, Tan, Benbasat and Cenfetelli (2016) pointed out that through the application of the expectation disconfirmation theory, one can often assess whether a service failure has occurred by evaluating the consumers’ behaviours or acts after interacting with an online interface. As such, they believe that for service failures to be limited or prevented, the concept of service quality must be given a profound attention as it would lead towards the creation of standards of service performance. In other words, the authors believe that it is through studying and researching on the concept of service quality, that proper layouts, as well as standards associated with service performance, can be attained. This, in turn, would help in preventing future electronic service failures. The authors developed the concept of service quality in order to come up with the predominant standards of service performance associated with e-commerce websites. The authors are driven by the belief that without standards of service performance, there would be significant accounts of e-commerce failures. Businesses in the e-commerce industry are today driven by the concept of quality. Quality is the biggest differentiating factor in the competitive business environment (Maxham & Netemeyer, 2002). Influenced by Dabholkar’s et al. (2000) study, which explores the concept of service quality, the authors believe that service quality plays a significant role in a customer’s subjective assessment with regard to his or her interaction with an e-merchant. As such, the service quality determines the degree to which the consumer’s expectations have been met during his/her interaction with the e-market with respect to the service performance. The authors posit that the concept of service quality is important as it has been applied profoundly in the information systems sector to evaluate the success of their functioning. The service quality has often be used to improve the support, which is offered by the Information Technology departments to their customers (Jiang et al., 2002). Tan, Benbasat and Cenfetelli (2016) believe that there is a need for more research associated with service quality to be done for development and improvement of e-services to take place. According to the authors, e-services should be designed to facilitate all e-commerce transactions better. Evidently, the technology deployment closely related with e-commerce websites, are in the form of self- service applications and as such, service quality plays an integral role in determining the consumer’s satisfaction level in their online transaction experiences. Consequently, e-merchants are challenged to carry out internal studies, experiments in order to find new ways in which their websites can deliver service performance standards thus improving their service quality, which in turn leaves the consumers satisfied. The e-commerce websites or online service should give the end user the reason to prefer online transactions to offline retail engagements (Bitner, 2001; Zeithaml et al. 2002). Transacting online should be made easy thus the performance standards must conform to the consumers’ expectations. In other words, the expectation disconfirmation should always test positive. All the above-delineated concepts are the driving force behind the authors’ focus on the concept of service quality. Based on their review of previous studies that focus on service quality in the e-commerce industry, Tan and Benbasat (2016) concurred with Cenfetelli’s et al. (2011) argument which held that the instrumental role of e-commerce websites is ensuring that there is consistency in the online transactional services. In other words, they believe that the primary role of e-commerce websites is to guarantee reliability with respect to the delivery of online transactional services through accessible, navigable, adaptable, secure as well as fast interfaces. Consumers’ evaluations of service quality depend on the effectiveness, of the e-commerce websites with regard to their fastness, secureness, adaptability and navigability of the website interfaces. Many studies conclude that the fundamental aspect that contributes to the service quality and performance of e-commerce websites is the web-enabled features as they assist the online consumers during the different transactional stages in which they are engaged. Equally, the value of information on the e-commerce websites also determines the success of the whole system (Agarwal and Venkatesh, 2013). Other scholars believe that the value of information, as well as the web-enabled features considerably, plays a big role in determining the degree of service quality for e-commerce websites (Tate and Evermann, 2010). Whereas all the above-delineated prescriptions depict the various levels attached to the service performance standards of e-commerce websites, they often range in different designs, principles and specifics. This indicates that different types of electronic commerce websites command for various service quality standards for the consumers’ expectations to be met. For the above reasons, the authors believed that there should be deep emphasis, or exploration of service quality for service performance standards to be attained as lack of such initiatives would lead to e-commerce service failures. It is indeed evident that the authors dwelled on the concept of service quality as lack of it is the primary cause of electronic commerce service failure. Service quality is the significant determinant of technological system success, and as the authors point out, information and system must be given more emphasis if the e-merchant is to improve its service performance. The information aspect is often associated with the value of information generated by the e- merchant's technological system. On the other hand, system attributes often involve the system’s technical performance. Therefore, these important concepts must be given more attention if electronic service failure is to be avoided in future. Question 3. To start with, it is important to note that the information aspect is often reflective of the communication perspective between the consumer and the e-merchant during the online transaction. Thus, the information helps in educating the end-user about the services he or she is about to acquire from the website. This, therefore, means that the information aspect plays a major role in determining the system output thus if it is well documented, the consumer satisfaction will be met as the service quality will be positive. On the contrary, if the information is poorly constituted or lacks some important concepts hence displaying a poor output quality, there would be information failure which in turn attributes to negative consumer perception about the e-commerce website. Therefore, understanding about information failure is imperative as it helps one to understand the technological issues that are related to information failures, which largely influence how consumers view e-commerce websites. As Wixom and Watson (2001) posit, information failure is closely linked to a significant deficiency of e-commerce websites. Besides, the information failure which is attributed to deficiency often transpires whenever the information provided on the e-merchant’s website somewhat deters consumers from undertaking their transactional objectives. Even though many experts and scholars of information systems have different views with regard to the standard information attributes, all of them agree on four standard attributes: completeness, timeliness, accuracy, as well as relevance. These four aspects are definitive of the information quality (Wixom and Watson (2001). Therefore, the study indicates that information failure is often brought about by the inaccuracy of the information display, irrelevant, untimely as well as incomplete transactional information. The focus on functional failures is also important in the study has the aspects associated with service functionalities often influence the consumers’ post-purchase behaviour. Service functionalities give the consumer the required support throughout his or her transactional process and as such understanding the attributes of functional failures is important as it helps the e-merchants to improve the services they offer to their clients or consumers (DeLeone and Mclean, 2004). Competent e-commerce website should provide for timely assistance before, during and after the transaction stages, which a consumer goes through. The assistance can only be realized through the provision of web-enabled functionalities, which always play a big role in nurturing a personalized customer service experience (Lightener, 2004). More often than not, having problems with ordering as well as payment has been identified as one the most common forms of functional failure, which consumers usually experience whenever they are transacting over the e-commerce websites. Based on the author’s definition, functional failure occurs when the provided functionalities, which are aimed at supporting the user in his or her quest to accomplish online transactions, are incapable of doing the same. Therefore, it is important for the aspect of function failure to be explored as its impacts the consumer’s decision-making process. With regard to system failures, Cenfetelli et al. (2008) point out that key system attributes often play an integral role in the delivery of service content associated with e-commerce websites. Thus, lack of the attributes often leads to what is referred to system failure. Consequently, system failure leads to a complex transactional process that leaves the consumers dissatisfied. Notably, system failures have often been attached to navigational challenges. Therefore, system failures primarily occur when service content is delivered in vain. In other words, a system failure takes place when an e- merchant's website is not delivered in a conducive manner that can allow the consumers to carry out their business or transactions. Therefore, focusing on system, functional and information failures on this study was important because it helps one to understand as well as learn about the recommended metrics of system quality. Understanding the system quality hence service performance would enable e-merchants to put up proper and functioning websites that lead to successful e-commerce systems hence satisfying the customer’s expectations. References Agarwal, R., and Venkatesh, V. (2002). “Assessing a Firm’s Web Presence: A Heuristic Evaluation Procedure for Measurement of Usability,” Information Systems Research (13:20), pp. 168-186. Bhattacherjee, A. 2001. “Understanding Information Systems Continuance: An Expectation Confirmation Model,” MIS Quarterly (25:3), pp. 351-370. Bitner, M. J. 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An Exploratory Study of the Formation and Impact of Electronic Service Failures. Mis Quarterly, 40(1), 1-29. Tate, M., and Evermann, J. (2010). “The End of ServQual in Online Services Research: Where to From Here,” e-Service Journal (7:1), pp. 60-85. Wixom, B. H., and Watson, H. J. (2001). “An Empirical Investigation of the Factors Affecting Data Warehousing Success,” MIS Quarterly (25:1), pp. 17-41. Zeithaml, V. A. (2002). “Service Excellence in Electronic Channels,” Managing Service Quality (12:3), pp. 135-138. Read More