Quality Dimensions in E-Commerce Software Tools: An Empirical Analysis of North American and Japanese Markets

Abstract

Are customers in different countries alike in their preferences for similar software products? In this article, we examine the relative importance of 5 dimensions of product quality across customers from North America and Japan. Based on data collected from over 400 customers of a representative sample of electronic- (e-) commerce software products, we tested the relative importance of these quality dimensions for differences across samples from North America and Japan. We use Bayesian analysis for analyzing the average influence of each attribute on the overall customer satisfaction as well as the variability of each attribute across the two samples. Our findings indicate that the importance of quality attributes is significantly different in North American and Japanese samples. We find that although usability dominates other attributes in North American data, Japanese customers place emphasis on functionality and capability of software products. Our results provide managerial implications for the designers of global software applications, especially in the domain of e-commerce.