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Introduction
Researchers have developed an interest in the online customer experience, most often explored within a business-to-consumer context (Hoffman and Novak, 2009; Luo et al. , 2011; Rose et al. , 2012). Numerous studies have outlined the web as having huge potential for business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) firms, yet we have little understanding of what influences a customer's experience on B2B websites. Researchers, marketing practitioners and consultants have long expressed an interest in the customer experience and have agreed on its importance in producing outcomes of satisfaction, re-visit intention and trust (Shobeiri et al. , 2015). However, empirical research on the OCE remains scant (Ahmed, 2011; Bigne et al. , 2008) particularly in the B2B context (Chakraborty et al. , 2002), thus it is important for both academia and industry to understand how the customer experience can affect the online customer in a number of different searching and buying contexts (Klaus, 2013).
Online social interaction through the use of web 2.0 functionality and social media has received much attention from marketing researchers as tools that allow customers to collaborate, communicate, share and connect with each other, (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Mayfield, 2008; O'Reilly's, 2005) yet limited research has explored the role of social interaction (synchronised communication) between customers and customer representatives in providing online customer support in relation to the customer experience (McLean and Wilson, 2016). Given the recent technological developments providing online communication, this paper aims to advance our understanding of the role of online communication in providing online customer support in relation to the customer experience within B2B websites.
Recently, researchers have investigated some of the drivers of a positive customer experience such as website design and ease of use (Martin et al. , 2015; Trevinal and Stenger, 2014). This study steps out with the online shopping environment and explores the customer experience in a B2B context, searching for business advisory information and services on business advisory websites. Business advisory websites provide services on business growth, leadership, developing employees, funding, tax, legal matters and day-to-day advice on running a business. Over 1 billion searches are performed for business advisory information worldwide each month (Alexa.com, 2017) making it a pertinent area of study. The main objectives of this study are to...