Title: Service quality of online transactions: the PayPal case

Authors: Costas Assimakopoulos; Eugenia Papaioannou; Christos Sarmaniotis

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, Alexander TEI of Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 141, 57400, Sindos, Thessaloniki, Greece ' Department of Business Administration, Alexander TEI of Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 141, 57400, Sindos, Thessaloniki, Greece ' Department of Business Administration, Alexander TEI of Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 141, 57400, Sindos, Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to investigate users' expectation and perception levels towards service quality dimensions regarding PayPal. The discrepancy gap between buyers' expectation and perception throughout those dimensions is studied. The gaps, identified between expectations and perceived experience although positive, are short, meaning that perceived performance and expected performance are close to each other. This can be interpreted as a lack of impressive positive surprise by the website to the customers. On the other hand, customers really know what to expect from such a website which means that details make the difference. There is always room for improvement as customers' demands and competition are ever increasing. The seller's perceptions and expectations to the PayPal remain untested and this could be considered as a limitation. The paper's results contribute towards improving the provided services of PayPal and of other similar companies, as well.

Keywords: e-service quality; customer's satisfaction; customer's perceptions; customer's expectations; gap analysis; PayPal.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEMR.2018.094992

International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 2018 Vol.9 No.4, pp.378 - 397

Received: 05 Nov 2016
Accepted: 02 Jul 2017
Published online: 28 Sep 2018 *

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