Determinants of Consumer Satisfaction on E-Procurement/ Online Purchasing In Sri Lanka

Abstract

Online purchasing and E-Procurement is a developing industry in Sri Lanka. During the past two years online purchasing has developed drastically. Many online has stores have developed and made mark in the industry. Main objective of this study is to determine the factors that would affect consumer satisfaction in online purchasing / e-procurement in Sri Lanka. Primary data gathering has been carried out through a questionnaire survey. Questionnaires were distributed among internet users manually. Online survey was also done by distributing questionnaires through emails and by distributing online questionnaire. Nine were focused on demographic factors and thirteen questions were included to evaluate the consumer satisfaction towards online purchasing and e-procurement. 274 valid questionnaires were collected. Descriptive analysis has been carried out to check the relationship between the customer satisfaction on E-procurement/ online purchasing and other explanatory variables. Due to the availability of colliniarity between explanatory variables, factor analysis has been carried out using data reduction techniques. To check the reliability of extracted factors, reliability analysis has been carried out. Based on the reliable factors hypothesis testing has been carried out for ordinal data using Kruskal Wallis test. 66% of the consumers are satisfied with online purchasing / eprocurement in Sri Lanka. Consumer satisfaction on e procurement/ online purchase can be categorised into three factors; Customer Service, Security & payments, Product information. Gender and purpose of browsing have significant impact on customer service. Most consumers are dissatisfied with response time, security, privacy, transaction ability, delivery speeds, and customer service after sales. Consumers are satisfied with information quality, user friendliness and product variation, price of products, payment systems & customer service before. Development of local online websites, secure delivery of packages, video facility for product description, introducing “cash on payment” methods are further recommended to enhance the online purchasing/ e-procurement in Sri Lanka.