E-SERVICE QUALITY AND CUSTOMER TRUST: AN IMPLICATIONS OF TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL ON CONSUMER LOYALTY

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic forced the transportation sector to go online which eventually resulted in a high economic downturn. PT. Kereta Api Indonesia (Persero), as a leading state-owned  transportation company continues evaluating its services in order to deliver a priority service that are expected to be able to produce priority improvements in the future, therefore PT. KAI (Persero) carries out a communication strategy to find out mutual information feedback from consumers because communication is a tool for interacting and exchanging information with one another. To support Indonesian government’s social distancing policy, PT. KAI issues a new policy on social distancing practice and non-cash payment, ultimately aiming at minimizing the viral spread. In this regard, the strategy is to form the Technology Acceptance application feature to create customer trust, which in turn will develop KAI customers’ loyalty. This study recruited 100 train passengers in the company’s operating region 2 as participants. PLS-SEM was applied to analyze the data, showing that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and e-service quality significantly affected consumer trust. While perceived usefulness was found to not affect the customer loyalty, the perceived ease of use, e-service quality, and consumer trust exhibited significant, positive effect on consumer loyalty.