Title:
MAKING POLITENESS BEYOND FEELING – AN INSTRUMENT FOR MEASURING IT IN ONLINE REALTORS’ STOREFRONTS

Authors:
I-Ching Chen, China

Abstract:

Politeness plays a significant role in not only human civilization development, but also in business domain, especially in service industry since it reflects a major facet of service quality. To effectively manage politeness issues in commercial contexts, a method to measure it becomes necessary. In light of its significance and the lack of the corresponding research works in virtual commercial environments, this article presents the development of an instrument for gauging politeness in online realtors’ storefronts. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to confirm fitness of the structural model and quality of the measurement model. Findings show that customers tend to pay more attention to storefronts’ behavioral transparency and offering useful information while they are evaluating politeness in realtors’ online storefronts. With this instrument, online realtors can better measure and then accordingly manage politeness in their online storefronts. This work sets a stage for future studies investigating the relationships between politeness and other factors in the context of online service business.