Effects of website quality on transaction intentions in Internet shopping: an empirical analysis of mediating effects of trust and satisfaction

Internet shoppers interact with Internet shopping mall systems while they shop. To understand why Internet shoppers make purchase, this study views Internet shopping malls as information systems. Although this view point seems reasonable, few previous studies employing this perspective are found in the relevant literature. This study develops a research model where Internet shoppers' transaction intentions are affected by the mediating effects of trust and satisfaction. Trust can mitigate uncertainty of the e-commerce environment for consumers, and satisfaction is widely used to measure the effectiveness of information systems. Therefore, we consider them as key elements in this study. We further employ the construct of website quality to explain why shoppers have different levels of trust and satisfaction. We classify website quality into information quality, system quality, and design quality. We collected 282 survey responses from Internet shoppers who have prior experiences with Internet shopping malls to purchase a product or service. The survey data are used to empirically test the proposed nine research hypotheses using LISREL. The LISREL results indicate that information quality and design quality have significant impact on both satisfaction and trust, while system quality has little relation to trust level. Further, trust is shown to have significant influence on satisfaction. Finally, both trust and satisfaction are strongly related to the future transaction intention.