A Conjoint Analysis of Online Consumer Satisfaction

The ability to measure the level of customer satisfaction with online shopping is essential in gauging the success and failure of e-commerce. To do so, Internet businesses must be able to determine and understand the values of their existing and potential customers. Hence, it is important for IS researchers to develop and validate a diverse array of metrics to comprehensively capture the attitudes and feelings of online customers. What factors make online shopping appealing to customers? What customer values take priority over others? This study’s purpose is to answer these questions, examining the role of several technology, shopping, and product factors on online customer satisfaction. This is done using a conjoint analysis of consumer preferences based on data collected from 188 young consumers. Results indicate that the three most important attributes to consumers for online satisfaction are privacy (technology factor), merchandising (product factor), and convenience (shopping factor). These are followed by trust, delivery, usability, product customization, product quality, and security. Implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided.