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Service Business
Published in: Service Business 2/2016

01-06-2016 | Empirical Article

The multichannel customer’s service experience: building satisfaction and trust

Authors: Estela Fernández-Sabiote, Sergio Román

Published in: Service Business | Issue 2/2016

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Abstract

Multichannel retailers dominate today’s retail landscape. Practitioners and researchers are particularly interested in understanding how the multichannel strategy helps establishing and developing relationships with customers. Our findings, from 302 customers of multichannel financial services firms, show that frontline employees’ customer facilitation behaviors (traditional channel) have a stronger impact on satisfaction than e-psychological benefits (derived from the company’s Web site), while their positive influence on trust is not significantly different. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
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Footnotes
1
Since data were collected cross-sectionally using self-report measures, the potential for common methods variance exists. Following Podsakoff et al. (2003, p. 889), we tested for this bias using Harman’s one-factor approach. In particular, we subjected all the measures to a confirmatory factor analysis, and found that the one-factor model demonstrated a poor fit to the data [χ (135) 2  = 2428.44; p = .0; GFI = .53; CFI = .81; RMSEA = .24; RMSR = .16; TLI (NNFI) = .78]. As a result, common methods bias was ruled out as a potential threat to the subsequent hypothesis testing.
 
2
Convergent validity was assessed by verifying the significance of the t values associated with the parameter estimates. All t values were positive and significant (p < .01). Discriminant validity was tested by comparing the average variance extracted by each construct to the shared variance between the construct and all other variables. For each comparison, the explained variance exceeded shared variance.
 
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Metadata
Title
The multichannel customer’s service experience: building satisfaction and trust
Authors
Estela Fernández-Sabiote
Sergio Román
Publication date
01-06-2016
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
Service Business / Issue 2/2016
Print ISSN: 1862-8516
Electronic ISSN: 1862-8508
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-015-0276-z

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