The effects of website quality on customer satisfaction, use intention, and purchase intention: A comparison among three types of booking channels

There is no doubt that hotel distribution has changed dramatically since the advent of the Internet. Online travel agencies’ (OTAs) and hotel websites have risen to reach a broader range of customers to generate more revenue. The latest in a series of disruptive innovations brought by the Internet, is the sharing economy business. This new wave of peer-to-peer businesses allow customers to make money from underused assets. In the hospitality industry, Airbnb is the best-known example of this phenomenon. The proliferation of online accommodation booking websites has created the need for measurement criteria to evaluate the quality of website. It is important for hoteliers, hosts, and website designers to understand and compare what components comprise website quality and how website quality influences customers’ purchase intention across three types of booking channels: OTA websites, hotel branded websites, and hospitality sharing economy platforms (HSEPs). This study identified what constituted website quality by regressing the perceived ease-of-use, information quality, privacy risk, and website aesthetics against overall website quality. This study also proposed a purchase intention model by adding customer satisfaction and use intention as two mediating variables. Results from 973 online survey responses revealed the conceptualization of website quality varied across three types of booking websites and highlighted the importance of website aesthetics. It was suggested OTA website quality was assessed based on customers’ experience in the information search process, while hotel website quality was evaluated with a focus on the technical adequacy. In the HSEP setting, it was noted that aesthetics was viewed as high-quality. Additionally, this study confirmed the inter-relationships among website quality, customer satisfaction and purchase intention, and mapped the customers’ search-purchase relationships in an online context. The mediating effects of customer satisfaction and use intention were also detected. The contribution of this research is both academic and practical. First, given the rapid growth of sharing economy platforms, this research is among the first studies to investigate the impact of website quality on customers’ intention to purchase on the HSEPs; and provides new insights in understanding this niche segment from customers’ perspectives. Second, this study expands upon the current website quality measurements body of knowledge in a more accurate manner by assessing measurement invariance and regressing overall website quality against each proposed website quality dimension across three booking channels. The third contribution of study is through the inclusion of two types of behavioral intentions (use intention and purchase intention) and the examination of the relationship between these two constructs, which suggest the diminished value of the billboard effect. Lastly, this study helps hospitality industry practitioners better position their own websites by revealing and comparing the influential factors that determine online accommodation bookers’ perceptions towards three types of booking channels

Alter ego, state of the art on user profiling: an overview of the most relevant organisational and behavioural aspects regarding User Profiling.

This report gives an overview of the most relevant organisational and\ud behavioural aspects regarding user profiling. It discusses not only the\ud most important aims of user profiling from both an organisation’s as\ud well as a user’s perspective, it will also discuss organisational motives\ud and barriers for user profiling and the most important conditions for\ud the success of user profiling. Finally recommendations are made and\ud suggestions for further research are given

WEBSITE QUALITY ASSESSMENT. A CASE STUDY OF GSM HOSTING FORUM

The ever-growing amount of data on mobile phones, tablets, and smart electronic devices on the Internet and the need to use this data to address problems highlight the importance of the evaluation and validation of data-sharing websites. The GSMHOSTING website plays a key role in communicating and providing services to its users in terms of repairing mobile phones and smart electronic devices. The purpose of this study was to determine its quality from the perspective of mobile phone repair technicians. These technicians were 100 people from Birjand in South Khorasan province (Iran) who used GSMHOSTING website as a reference. The website quality assessment study was conducted in the summer of 2020. The study applied a descriptive survey and cross-sectional method based on a questionnaire. The questionnaire included 11 website dimensions: Routing, Information, Delivery, Apparent Features, Security, Reputation, Society, Entertainment, Provided goods and services, Reliability, Trust. Scores were given on a Likert scale. The validity of the questionnaire was determined using the opinions of web experts. The SPSS software and descriptive and inferential statistics methods were used to analyze data. The results indicated that the average quality of this website was acceptable in terms of technicians’ goals.  Addressing problems highlighted some of the website dimensions that will increase the overall quality of the website to support technicians in their activities

Three Research Essays on the Effects of Charity Website Design on Online Donations

This dissertation, which comprises three essays, examines the effects of charity website characteristics on people\u27s attitudes and online donation behaviors based on the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Essay 1), the halo effect (Essay 2), and self-schema, congruity, and visual rhetoric (Essay 3). Essay 1: The Elaborating Role of Personal Involvement with Charity Giving and Helper\u27s High on the Effects of Website Quality: Multiple Roles of Variables Although the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) has been utilized for decades, researchers have not leveraged its full capabilities and richness in understanding the multiple roles postulate and employing the central and peripheral routes to persuasion. The central theme of this study is that cues can assume multiple roles, serving as central or peripheral cues, depending on an elaboration state. Moreover, this study asserts that a variable cannot be determined as a central or peripheral cue without consisting the elaboration state and associated theoretical explanations. This study theorizes and empirically tests the multiples roles postulate in the context of charity website and online donations. Using websites as a persuasion channel, this study investigates the effects of charity website quality, consisting of information content quality and system quality, on attitude toward the charity website, which in turn influences willingness to donate to the charity website. In keeping with the multiple roles postulate, this research investigates two charity-specific motivational constructs, personal involvement with charity giving and helper\u27s high as elaboration states, proposing that people with high personal involvement are more likely to be persuaded by information content, including financial, performance, and donation information. Likewise, individuals who reflect greater helper\u27s high, will rely more on system quality characteristics (including navigability, download delay, visual aesthetics, and security) in evaluating and forming their attitudes toward the charity websites. The results of structural equation modeling supported all hypotheses. This study extends the ELM by supporting the multiple roles postulate that has not received adequate attention in prior research and introducing charity-specific elaboration motivations. Essay 2: Beautiful is Good and Good is Reputable: Multi-Attribute Charity Website Evaluation and Reputation Formation under the Halo Effect The halo effect has been extensively employed to understand how people make judgments of quality about an object. However, there is little research on how people evaluate multi-attribute objects and what types of salient halos exist in their evaluation. In addition, little research has investigated the initial reputation formation of an unknown object. Based on these two research lacuna, the purposes of this study is to identify if there are evidences of various salient halos in evaluating multi-attributes objects and to theorize initial reputation formation. To accomplish these research objectives, this study employs charity websites as a multi-attribute donation channel consisting of three dimensions of information contents (mission, financial, and donation assistance information) and four dimensions of system functionalities/features (i.e., navigability, download speed, visual aesthetics, and security). This study proposes collective halo, aesthetics halo, two-sided quality halo, quality halo, and reputation halo in the context of charity website evaluation. The results of structural equation modeling and other analyses show evidence of the proposed halos. Essay 3: The Effects of Schema Congruity and Visual Consistency on Social Judgment of Charity Websites Effectively designed websites can positively enhance the donors\u27 perceptions so as to facilitate online donations. Drawing on extensive research on self-schema, congruity, and visual rhetoric, this study examines the effects of schema congruity (SC) and visual consistency (VC) on the perceived warmth and competence of charity websites. This study theorizes schema-visual congruity, an interaction between SC and VC. Using a controlled lab experiment, this study finds significant main effects of schema congruity and visual consistency on perceived warmth and competence. Also, there is a positive interaction between SC and VC, supporting the need for schema-visual congruity as a determinant of perceived warmth and competence. Consistent with prior eCommerce and donation research, this study finds that positive perceptions of charity websites (i.e., warmth and competence) increase attitude toward donation to the website, which in turn influences donation intention

The effects of ICT ownership on hospital performance in the Cameroonian context

This study aims to research the effects of the ownership of ICT on hospital performance in the Cameroonian context. To achieve this objective, data from a field survey of a valid random sample of 479 employees from first and second category hospitals in Cameroon are subjected to descriptive and econometric analyzes. The results obtained reveal that the level of ownership of ICT by hospital staff is very average and has an impact on hospital performance. Indeed, the inferential analyzes performed using simple regression showed a positive and significant effect of the perceived ease of use of ICT, the perceived usefulness and cognitive absorption on hospital performance. These results, discussed from the perspective of Berbain and Minvielle (2001), Li, Benton and Leong (2002), Mukuna (2016) and Picard (2007) suggest acting on the determinants of ICT ownership, which are: training, raising awareness and improving the working conditions of hospital staff if we want to improve their ability to use and their enthusiasm for this use of ICT. this would improve staff satisfaction, patient satisfaction and the quality of clinical services. Keywords: ICT ownership, Perceived usefulness, Perceived usability, Cognitive absorption, Hospital performance. DOI: 10.7176/IKM/10-3-05 Publication date: April 30th 202

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

The impact of electronic service quality dimension on customer satisfaction

Online purchasing is becoming increasingly common as a purchasing mode. At the onset of e-commerce it was thought that success was guaranteed merely by being present on the internet and offering low prices. Currently customer service has proved itself to be a key element for achieving good results in a website (Zeithaml, Parasuraman & Malhotra, 2002b). In this context, the study of commercial website quality has emerged as an area of strategic importance. As in traditional stores, service quality and customer satisfaction seem to play vital roles in the success and survival of Internet sites

The impact of electronic service quality dimension on customer satisfaction

Online purchasing is becoming increasingly common as a purchasing mode. At the onset of e-commerce it was thought that success was guaranteed merely by being present on the internet and offering low prices. Currently customer service has proved itself to be a key element for achieving good results in a website (Zeithaml, Parasuraman & Malhotra, 2002b). In this context, the study of commercial website quality has emerged as an area of strategic importance. As in traditional stores, service quality and customer satisfaction seem to play vital roles in the success and survival of Internet sites