Communicational Function: Business Analysis

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2.1 Communicational Function
Communication is “the human activity that creates and maintains relationships between the different parties involved” (Lages, Lages, & Lages, 2005, p. 1041). In 2000, Kiang, Raghu, & Shang stated that communication is the best way to exchange information among sellers and buyers throughout an e-commerce context. Peterson, Balasubramanian, and Bronnenberg (1997) described communication channel intermediaries as giving knowledge regarding to the accessibility and features of the seller’s products or services to buyers and prospective buyers.
“Communication function refers to the use of Internet as customer service tool to disseminate information and answer all enquiries from customers. Examples of this tool including …show more content…

These methods are used on the webpage to connect companies and customers for more convenience and useful. Help desks provide technical support via e-mail. Chat rooms allow customers to connect with customer service directly. FAQs provide a place where customers discuss their problems with the concerned company.
In an offline setting, communication is a relationship marketing activity in the lodging industry (Kim et al., 2001); newsletters, direct mailings, telemarketing services, thank-you letters, and birthday cards have been used to measure the communication dimension. Kim et al., (2001) asserted that communication was treated as a determinant of relationship quality. Therefore, this study extends the previous empirical support in the offline setting by proving that communication can be used to evaluate e-relationship quality in online activities.
In this thesis, communicational function is a tool to promote e-marketing service and to exchange online information between customers and company not only in reaction to a customer’s inquiry, but also to sustain customer relationships. The communicational function may involve the exchange of information through the website, e-marketing, complaint handling, customer support on the web and e-promotional activities such as e-newsletters, thank-you and birthday messages and special …show more content…

Online travel suppliers on the one hand focus on just four dimensions which affect website quality such as useful information content, reputation and website security, structure and website convenience, and usefulness (Kim & Lee, 2004). Consequently, online travel agencies discovered information content as the prominent dimension affecting customer satisfaction whereas structure and ease of use are as the major dimensions that are discussed by online travel suppliers. Table 2.1 summarized studies of website quality based upon dimensions used by

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