راحتی تحویل خرید آنلاین برای افزایش رضایت مشتری و تشویق e-WOM How convenient is it? Delivering online shopping convenience to enhance customer satisfaction and encourage e-WOM

1. Introduction Consumer decision making is significantly influenced by both the speed and ease with which consumers can contact retail outlets. Many consumers turn to the Internet to reduce the effort associated with making a decision (Beauchamp and Ponder, 2010). While shopping consumers spend time and effort to complete multiple tasks and since today’s customer is more time-starved than ever, it is appropriate to consider the benefits of providing online shopping convenience. Online convenience has been one of the principal promoters of customer’s predisposition to adopt online purchasing (Jiang et al., 2013). Seiders et al. (2000) argue that the importance that customers put on convenience prompts retailers to redesign store operating systems and emphasize the efficiency of the service provided. At another level, retailers should focus on the increase of mobile apps and how they helped fuel and define how consumers value time and energy. The present study argues that consumers favor retailers that save them time and energy. Online retailers are certainly able to supply more convenience as store location becomes irrelevant and consumers may now shop from any location, 24 h a day, seven days a week (Beauchamp and Ponder, 2010). Therefore, companies must develop a more precise understanding of the impacts of online convenience. The main goal of the present study is to explore how consumers evaluate the dimension of convenience in the context of online retail, by focusing on the consumer experience with global retailers’ websites. The research gap emerges from the need to validate the research by (Jiang et al., 2013) and from questions which were not answered by later studies by Mpinganjira (2015), Mehmood and Najmi (2017), Haridasan and Fernando (2018) and Pham et al. (2018) namely the meaning of attentiveness convenience and the relationship with behavioral outcomes. Exploring the literature on convenience it is evident that convenience encompasses several dimensions. However, there has been no agreement on what these dimensions are (Seiders et al., 2007). Given the above reasoning, this paper seeks to deepen the understanding concerning the importance of online convenience and its dimensions. Based on (Jiang et al., 2013) proposed model the current investigation provides a theoretical contribution by expanding the capacity of the original model via the addition of attentiveness convenience construct to the original formulation. Furthermore, the current study provides an assessment of which dimensions of convenience are most important to consumers when shopping online. Lastly, since the majority of studies addressing online convenience have mainly focused on the relationship with purchase intentions (e.g. Pham et al., 2018), the current study supplements the study by Roy et al. (2016) and closes the gap by investigating the relationship between online convenience, behavioral intentions, satisfaction, e-WOM. In a practical sense, the identification of the dimensions that positively influence purchase behavior intentions and satisfaction can help managers to overcome obstacles to the delivery of an excellent and convenient service to customers, which represent a key driving force in enhancing companies’ online competitiveness.