Critical review of the e-loyalty literature: a purchase-centred framework

Over the last few years, the concept of online loyalty has been examined extensively in the literature, and it remains a topic of constant inquiry for both academics and marketing managers. The tremendous development of the Internet for both marketing and e-commerce settings, in conjunction with the growing desire of consumers to purchase online, has promoted two main outcomes: (a) increasing numbers of Business-to-Customer companies running businesses online and (b) the development of a variety of different e-loyalty research models. However, current research lacks a systematic review of the literature that provides a general conceptual framework on e-loyalty, which would help managers to understand their customers better, to take advantage of industry-related factors, and to improve their service quality. The present study is an attempt to critically synthesize results from multiple empirical studies on e-loyalty. Our findings illustrate that 62 instruments for measuring e-loyalty are currently in use, influenced predominantly by Zeithaml et al. (J Marketing. 1996;60(2):31-46) and Oliver (1997; Satisfaction: a behavioral perspective on the consumer. New York: McGraw Hill). Additionally, we propose a new general conceptual framework, which leads to antecedents dividing e-loyalty on the basis of the action of purchase into pre-purchase, during-purchase and after-purchase factors. To conclude, a number of managerial implementations are suggested in order to help marketing managers increase their customers’ e-loyalty by making crucial changes in each purchase stage

Flickr: A case study of Web2.0

The “photosharing” site Flickr is one of the most commonly cited examples used to define Web2.0. This paper explores where Flickr’s real novelty lies, examining its functionality and its place in the world of amateur photography. The paper draws on a wide range of sources including published interviews with its developers, user opinions expressed in forums, telephone interviews and content analysis of user profiles and activity. Flickr’s development path passes from an innovative social game to a relatively familiar model of a website, itself developed through intense user participation but later stabilising with the reassertion of a commercial relationship to the membership. The broader context of the impact of Flickr is examined by looking at the institutions of amateur photography and particularly the code of pictorialism promoted by the clubs and industry during the C20th. The nature of Flickr as a benign space is premised on the way the democratic potential of photography is controlled by such institutions. Several optimistic views of the impact of Flickr such as its facilitation of citizen journalism, “vernacular creativity” and in learning as an “affinity space” are evaluated. The limits of these claims are identified in the way that the system is designed to satisfy commercial purposes, continuing digital divides in access and the low interactivity and criticality on Flickr. Flickr is an interesting source of change, but can only to be understood in the perspective of long term development of the hobby and wider social processes

Impact of web and digital experience on the stickiness of third party hotel website / Nina Farisha Isa...[et al]

The rapid development and use of mobile technologies has changed the way of our everyday lives, especially individual that feel a sense of experience as a tool for enhancing task performance. In addition, mobile technologies also have changed the way marketers and consumers communicate. However, digital experience is still a largely unexplored concept in both hospitality research and practice. Drawing from the literature on human computer interaction in information system and flow theory in consumer behavior research, this study theoretically identifies and empirically explores the concept of flow through experience and its antecedents (i.e., web experience and digital experience on the outcome, and web stickiness) in the hotel context. Using eCommerce website and mobile technologies as the target, an offline and online survey will be conducted. This study contributes theoretically and empirically to the body of IS use research and has managerial implications, suggesting that web experience and digital experience is a necessary condition for stick to the websites. As a result, by improving user’s experience through digital applications is critical to build strong relationships with the consumers

Information Technology Applications in Hospitality and Tourism: A Review of Publications from 2005 to 2007

The tourism and hospitality industries have widely adopted information technology (IT) to reduce costs, enhance operational efficiency, and most importantly to improve service quality and customer experience. This article offers a comprehensive review of articles that were published in 57 tourism and hospitality research journals from 2005 to 2007. Grouping the findings into the categories of consumers, technologies, and suppliers, the article sheds light on the evolution of IT applications in the tourism and hospitality industries. The article demonstrates that IT is increasingly becoming critical for the competitive operations of the tourism and hospitality organizations as well as for managing the distribution and marketing of organizations on a global scale

Interpreting infrastructure: Defining user value for digital financial intermediaries.

The 3DaRoC project is exploring digital connectivity and peer-to-peer relationships in financial services. In the light of the near collapse of the UK and world financial sector, understanding and innovating new and more sustainable approaches to financial services is now a critical topic. At the same time, the increasing penetration and take-up of robust high-speed networks, dependable peerto- peer architectures and mobile multimedia technologies offer novel platforms for offering financial services over the Internet. These new forms of digital connectivity give rise to opportunities in doing financial transactions in different ways and with radically different business models that offer the possibility of transforming the marketplace. One area in the digital economy that has had such an effect is in the ways that users access and use digital banking and payment services. The impact of the new economic models presented by these digital financial services is yet to be fully determined, but they have huge potential as disruptive innovations, with a potentially transformative effect on the way that services are offered to users. Little is understood about how technical infrastructures impact on the ways that people make sense of the financial services that they use, or on how these might be designed more effectively. 3DaRoC is exploring this space working with our partners and end users to prototype and evaluate new online, mobile, ubiquitous and tangible technologies, exploring how these services might be extended.Executive Summary: Drawing from Studies of Use - the value, use and interpretation of infrastructure in digital intermediaries to their users. The UK economy has a huge dependence on financial services, and this is increasingly based on digital platforms. Innovating new economic models around consumer financial services through the use of digital technologies is seen as increasingly important in developed economies. There are a number of drivers for this, ranging from national economic factors to the prosaic nature of enabling cheap, speedy and timely interactions for users. The potential for these new digital solutions is that they will allay an over-reliance on the traditional banking sector, which has proved itself to be unstable and risky, and we have seen a number of national policy moves to encourage growth in this sector. Partly as a result of the 2008 banking crisis, there has been an explosion in peer-to-peer financial services for non-professional consumers. These organisations act as intermediaries between users looking to trade goods or credit. However, building self-sustaining or profitable financial services within this novel space is itself fraught with commercial, regulatory, technical and social problems. This document reports on the value, use and interpretation of infrastructure in digital intermediaries to their users, describing analysis of contextual field studies carried out in two retail digital financial intermediary organisations: Zopa Limited and the Bristol Pound. It forms the second milestone document in the 3DaRoC project, developing patterns of use that have arisen on the back of the technical infrastructures in the two organisations that form cases for examination. Its purpose is to examine how the two different technical infrastructures that underpin the transactions that they support–composed of the back-office hardware and software, data structures, the networking and communications technologies used, supported consumer devices, and the user interfaces and interaction design–have provided opportunities for users to realise their financial and other needs. While we orient towards the issues of service use (and its problems), we also examine the activities and expectations of their various users. Our research has involved teams from Lancaster University examining Zopa and Brunel University focusing on the Bristol Pound over approximately a one-year period from October 2013 to October 2014. Extensive interviews, document analysis, observation of user interactions, and other methods have been employed to develop the process analyses of the firms presented here. This report comprises of three key sections: descriptions of the user demographics for Zopa and the Bristol Pound, a discussion about the user experience and its role in community, and an examination of the role of usage data in the development of these a products. We conclude with final analytical section drawing preliminary conclusions from the research presented.The 3DaRoC project is funded by the RCUK Digital Economy ‘Research in the Wild’ theme (grant no. EP/K012304/1)

Understanding hotel visitors’ motives to use hotel gamified applications

While hospitality has been one of the industries that have been keen to adopt and use various technologies, the proliferation of gamification application is still to materialise. It is therefore very interesting to investigate the potential benefits of gamified applications in the area of the hospitality industry by identifying the motives of individuals’ when they use a hotel-gamified application. Hospitality industry is becoming more and more competitive and surviving and marketing a destination has become a challenge, so in order to gain a competitive advantage, the use of modern technology is crucial for many destination-marketing organizations. Gamification can be applied in technology-mediated and non-technology-mediated contexts. Within technology-mediated contexts, gamification is more applicable due to the favourable environment that such context offers. Recent evolutions indicate that mobile devices are becoming travel buddies and their use is profoundly influencing the different phases of a travellers’ journey. Hence, it could be assumed, that a mobile hotel gamified application is now easier than ever to develop and succeed. Since fun has become the requirement to ensure continuous demands for many products or services, companies and organizations feel the need to involve fun in their offerings to secure continuity in consumption and use. Therefore, this study aims to understand the meaning of fun for individuals when they will use a hotel-gamified application, using visual material so the interviewees would have an idea of how a hotel-gamified application would look if it was in existence today based on the current definitions of gamification

Application of Werthner and Klein’s Model in Tourism Context

Web evaluation has become a critical process in DMOs’ performance measurement efforts.  However, Web evaluation research over the past decade has led to diverse approaches and findings rather than a unified understanding of success factors that should be measured in order to gauge a Web site’s performance.  The common success factors and potential additional factors identified in this study provide an important basis for practical Web evaluation implementation and simultaneously serve as a useful input for future research.  The major benefit of this study is the digest of a large volume of key factors into one comprehensive model that can be tested and applied to Web site development and evaluation problems.  This integration helps to identify not only commonalities but also gaps in existing approaches. Keywords: Destination marketing; DMOs’ performance measurement; E-satisfaction; E-loyalty; E-quality; Qualitative meta-analysi

Storytelling on Social Media: The Motives for Telling the Tourist Experience to the Connected Others

The development of the Internet and improvements in information and communication technologies (ICTs) allow consumers to share their opinions and experiences of products and services with other consumers through electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM, word-of-mouse) communication. Tourism is one sector that has a very close relationship with the innovations in information technologies. Today, social media provide many opportunities for travellers to share their holiday experiences with their connected others. People share their opinions with connected others by sending e-mails, posting comments and feedback on websites and forums, publishing online blogs, and forming and joining communities on the Internet. Sharing their experiences with others contributes to the value of the experience and makes it more meaningful and memorable. In this study, following a theoretical discussion based on a review of the relevant literature, the researcher would like to demonstrate the role and importance of sharing the tourist experience with connected others in social media. By conducting structured interviews (online and offline) with people who were chosen based on their holiday experience sharing habits, the contribution and role of storytelling in a tourism consumer’s holiday experience are explored. For new tourists, storytelling plays a serious role in addition to the holiday experience itself, and sharing experiences with connected others is seen as a vital tool for a fulfilling holiday experience. The results will demonstrate the contribution of storytelling to the tourist experience, and provide a basis for further research on scale development for assessing the impact of storytelling on the tourist experience.&nbsp

Factors Motivating the Customers’ SNS Brand Page Behavior: Comparison between China and Korea

Purpose – The wide spread and usage of SNS brand pages in companies has renovated the brand strategy in the new era. Embedded in an organically grown network of social ties, SNS brand pages show great differences from the ordinary online brand community. Called upon by the new research opportunities, this paper investigates the motivating factors (functional benefits, hedonic benefits, economic benefits and intrinsic benefits) influencing customers’ SNS brand page behavior (participation/commitment) in the cultural context of China and Korea, so as to provide meaningful implications to the companies’ effective use of SNS brand pages, and help global companies in their development of brand strategies for the two countries. Design/methodology/approach – In all, 407 Chinese and 384 Korean SNS brand page users were surveyed to conduct the above research agenda by structural equation modeling. Findings –prior motivating factor constructs are valid in influencing the consumers’ participation in and commitment to SNS brand pages in both countries, yet with dissimilarities in the significance and strength. Information seeking is not significantly correlated with the SNS brand page behavior in China, and convenience is found not correlate in Korea. Brand reputation in China and reward in Korea are the most influential factors of participation behavior. Interaction plays an important role in affecting commitment behavior in both countries. Participation has a positive impact on purchase intention in two countries, but only Chinese samples’ commitment has a positive impact on purchase intention

What Encourages Purchase of Virtual Gifts in Live Streaming: Cognitive Absorption, Social Experience and Technological Environment

Live streaming has become extraordinarily popular worldwide. As a new form of social media, live streaming enables two levels of real-time interactions (i.e., between viewers and the streamer, and among viewers) and is monetized in a new way-viewers’ purchase of virtual gifts. The new monetization model has achieved a great success, yet there is a lack of understanding about what encourages viewers to purchase virtual gifts in live streaming. To explain such purchase behavior, this study develops a model which investigates the roles of viewers’ holistic experience with the system (i.e., cognitive absorption) and their social experiences (i.e., para-social interaction and virtual crowd experience), as well as how these experiences are developed within the technological environment of live streaming (i.e., interactivity, deep profiling and design aesthetics). The model was validated by using survey data collected from China. We also discuss implications for research and practice emerging out of this study