E-S-QUAL

What it measures

Measures customer assessments of e-service quality across four dimensions central to routine online interactions. Efficiency captures ease and speed of accessing and using the site. Fulfillment captures the extent to which the site's promises about order delivery and item availability are fulfilled. System Availability captures correct technical functioning. Privacy captures the degree to which the site protects customer information. Developed by the original SERVQUAL team as the definitive multi-item e-service quality scale. The companion E-RecS-QUAL (11 items) measures recovery service quality when problems arise. E-S-QUAL is the most widely validated electronic service quality measure in marketing and information systems research.

Response format

Likert (1–5, strongly disagree to strongly agree)

Scale items

Efficiency — ease and speed of accessing and using the site (Likert 1–7, strongly disagree to strongly agree)

• This site makes it easy to find what I need.
• It makes it easy to get anywhere on the site.
• It enables me to complete a transaction quickly.
• Information at this site is well organised.

Fulfillment — extent to which the site's promises about order delivery and product availability are fulfilled

• It delivers orders when promised.
• This site makes items available for delivery within a suitable time frame.
• It quickly delivers what I order.
• It sends out the items ordered.
• It has in stock the items the company claims to have.
• It is truthful about its offerings.
• It makes accurate promises about delivery of products.

System Availability — correct technical functioning of the site

• This site is always available for business.
• This site launches and runs right away.
• This site does not crash.
• Pages at this site do not freeze after I enter my order information.

Privacy — degree to which the site is safe and protects customer information

• It protects information about my web-shopping behaviour.
• It does not share my personal information with other sites.
• This site protects information about my credit card.
• This site has adequate security features.
• I feel safe in my transactions with this site.
• It adequately protects my privacy.
• This site collects personal information only when needed for the transaction.
• This site does not share my personal information with others.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Four subscale scores. Fulfillment and Privacy are the strongest predictors of overall quality perceptions and purchase intentions. E-S-QUAL has been validated across retail, banking, airline, and government e-service contexts. E-RecS-QUAL (11 items, same paper) measures recovery quality and should be administered alongside for comprehensive profiling.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A., & Malhotra, A. (2005). E-S-QUAL: A multiple-item scale for assessing electronic service quality. Journal of Marketing Research, 42(1), 1–21.

Keywords