Perceived Electronic Service Quality : Results from a Cross-National Study in Mobile Internet Services

Work on how consumers evaluate electronic service quality is both topical and important due to the well accepted criticality of electronic channels in selling products and services. However, the extant research on electronic research quality is preoccupied with the web site internet context and most of the studies are single-country studies, inhibiting conclusions of robustness and generalizability. Theoretically rooted in the Nordic Model of perceived service quality the study uses an e-service quality scale to measure mobile internet service quality and most importantly it does so in different national settings. Consistent with the extant e-service quality literature, results indicate that e-service quality is a second-order factor, with three reflective first-order dimensions: efficiency, outcome, and customer care. Most importantly, cross-validation investigations using samples drawn from Korean, Hong-Kong and Japanese mobile internet user populations support the factorial structure invariance of the construct. Following Cheung and Reynolds' (2002) suggestions, we tentatively examine factor means differences between the three countries contributing to the scarce cross-national electronic service quality literature. Findings imply that though consumers in different countries use the same dimensions so as to evaluate mobile internet services, importance weightings assigned on these dimension are not the same