E- Logistics Service Quality in the digital era: key drivers for gaining customer satisfaction and loyalty.

In the digital era, where customers are shopping online, the internet has represented a new challenge and opportunities for retailers to reach customers. While the development of this channel has benefited consumers in terms of monetary and time savings, on the other hand the e-commerce retailing scenario has introduced new issues which are not related to merely the price and quality of the service but also relative to e-logistics service quality (e-LSQ). Thus, in order to analyse the significance of e-logistics service quality factors influencing the consumer’s satisfaction in the shopping online, we propose a survey-based analysis concerning the impact of these elements, assuming that the consumer satisfaction leads to consumer loyalty and retention. The multiple regression analysis has confirmed the significance of the site ease-of-use and the Physical Distribution Service Quality (PDSQ) in predicting the customer satisfaction, whereas other antecedents, such as the Physical Distribution Service Price (PDSP) and the product returns management (PRM), has been disconfirmed. The study firstly contributes to extend previous models, by verifying the direct correlation among the ease of use and consumer satisfaction and loyalty. In addition, the results identify the existing trade-off among the price and quality in the e-logistics service quality. Finally, the non-significance of the hypothesis concerning the product returns management introduces the need for further studies.