PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to design, develop and evaluate a reliable and valid scale for the measurement of online retail service quality, specifically in the French context.Design/methodology/approachStudy 1 derived scale items from the literature by content analysis. Study 2 extracted items from two quantitative data sets, gathered by questionnaire from 172 and 125 online shoppers, by exploratory factor and reliability analyses. Study 3 applied psychometric testing and confirmatory factor analysis to data from a survey of 178 e‐shoppers.FindingsThe outcome is “E‐tail SQ”, a 15‐item scale to measure five key user values (labelled ease of use, information content, fulfilment reliability, security/privacy and post‐purchase customer service). These scale items derived from French data are found to be similar to those identified in previous international studies, except that French e‐shoppers place more emphasis than their English‐speaking counterparts on internet security and privacy of personal information.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample profiles place limits on the applicability of the scale across markets and service categories. Further research must be conducted to improve its external validity.Practical implications“E‐tail SQ” can help online retailers in the French marketplace to measure service quality delivered, and thereby to improve it, and may be transferable to other national markets.Originality/valueThis new scale for the measurement of service quality in a specific cultural environment offers online retailers a framework within which to manage their web‐based relationships with a growing number of online shoppers.
Purpose This study aims to investigates the effect of three customer orientation components – customer information-processing, responsiveness and values and norms – on a firm’s decision to adopt environmental management practices. Consistent with the literature on strategy and industrial marketing, the authors also examine the moderating effect of marketplace characteristics. Design/methodology/approach The authors use a linear model on a sample of 4,324 French firms with ten or more employees. Findings Based on a large-scale survey of firms across industries, the results indicate that customer information-processing and values and norms directly contribute to the adoption of environmental management practices. Furthermore, the effect of customer information-processing is shown to be contingent on market competition. Practical implications The findings have direct practical implications. When managers recognize the importance and usefulness of customer orientation, they understand the need to formulate organizational strategies in terms of environmental management practices that reflect customer expectations. In addition, following the strategic fit approach, customer orientation should fit with the specific market environment to stimulate the adoption of environmental management practices. In other words, the findings are useful for managers, who can assess the specific environmental characteristics they are facing and align these with customer orientation to build competitive advantage. Originality/value The findings indicate that the different dimensions of customer orientation distinctly affect a firm’s decision to adopt environmental management practices. In this sense, the authors argue that they capture different facets of the customer orientation measure, which points to the importance of analyzing the dimensions of customer orientation separately. Furthermore, rather than analyzing aggregate measures of corporate social responsibility, the authors selected environmental orientation as a specific dimension, which has received less attention in the industrial marketing literature. Finally, the main findings mark an important contribution to the literature because they provide deeper insights into the conditions under which customer orientation dimensions drive the adoption of environmental management practices.
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