Failure to deliver? Linking online order fulfillment glitches with future purchase behavior

Abstract

Abstract This study investigates operations failures in online retailing. Specifically, it examines the relationship between an operations glitch (order fulfillment delay) and subsequent shopping behavior for previously loyal customers in an online retailing environment. Using archival data from a moderate‐sized online retailer of printed material, this study employs expectancy disconfirmation and distributive justice theories to empirically show that adverse post‐glitch reactions are seen in several dimensions of customer shopping behavior – order frequency and order size decrease, while customer anxiety level increases. The study thus demonstrates that online retailers need to deliver on order fulfillment promises, since a failure to live up to these promises can be detrimental. This study is unique in that, unlike previous studies on order fulfillment in online retailing investigating the tie between fulfillment success and future behavior, we examine the repercussions of order fulfillment failures upon future purchase behavior.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 191 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.