Understanding the Impact of Service Convenience on Customer Satisfaction in Home Delivery: Evidence from Karachi

Abstract

The rise of e-commerce caused by the growing popularity of the world wide web, electronic gadgets, and social  media,  has  led  to  a  constant  upward  trend  in  online  shopping  in  Pakistan. Home  delivery  is  crucial  to  online  shoppers  because  if  the  product  does not reach their desired destination, the purchase made will be conceived as inconvenient by the buyer. This study aims to identify how five kinds of conveniences, i.e., decision convenience, access convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience, and post benefit convenience, impact how satisfied customers are by the services provided by online retailers during home delivery. 110 individuals who availed a  home  delivery  service  over  the  past  year  took  part  in  the  study,  and  customer  experience  was observed as they were offered different conveniences at the various stages of home delivery. After performing a regression analysis, results show that four independent variables have a positive and significant  impact  on  the  dependent  variable,  while  the  impact  of  benefit  convenience,  the  fifth variable, is insignificant. These results show us that the timely and correct delivery of products does not impact satisfaction as long as the provider offers a convenient post purchase return policy. They  also  show  that  decision  convenience,  post  benefit,  and  transaction  convenience  have  the  greatest  impacts  on  customer  satisfaction.  Access convenience and benefit convenience are also shown to have a high impact on the dependent variable. Based on these findings, we recommend that  online  retailers  pay  more  attention  to  offering  convenience  services  to  their  customers  to improve satisfaction.