Trust in Courier Services and Its Antecedents as a Determinant of Perceived Service Quality and Future Intention to Use Courier Service

Abstract

Service quality perceived by clients should be a crucial element in the process of co-creating sustainable services. This article aimed to examine relationships between five constructs: the usefulness of courier services, the ease of use of courier services, the trust in courier services, the service quality, and the future intention to use courier services. This research focuses on courier services. An electronic questionnaire was used to conduct confidential interviews. It was distributed between January and March 2019. The number of questionnaires returned by courier service customers amounted to 1073. The authors used generalized least squares (GLS) of structural equation modelling (GLS-SEM) to verify the hypotheses. The obtained results confirmed statistically significant relationships between the variables of the ease of use and the trust in service, the usefulness and the trust in service, the trust in service and the service quality and finally, the service quality and the future intention to use the services. The obtained results confirmed an important role of technological aspects in courier service quality, which will become the main determinant of the development of this sector in the future. The authors proposed a new approach to the definition of trust in service. Apart from the interpersonal trust, they shed more light on the trust in the supplier, i.e., the trust in the used technologies.