The Relationship Between the Online Consumer’s Profi le and the Type of Service Encounter in the Online Travel Agencies

Abstract

t In the context of B2C electronic commerce, two different service encounters can take place: (1) service encounters without incidents during which customers get the service for themselves and without the presence of employees and (2) service encounters with incidents with interpersonal and non-interpersonal interactions. Taking the sector of travel agencies as a reference, the results of our study shows that there is a statistically signifi cant relationship between the sociodemographic profi le of the online consumer and the type of service encounter. In this sense, our research suggests that sociodemographic variables have a statistically signifi cant infl uence on the type of service encounter. On the other hand, the evaluation of the service quality by online shoppers is quite homogeneous in each service encounter. At least, we have not found great differences according to gender, age, educational level, or frequency of Internet use.