The Role Of Flow In Creating E-loyalty: The Case Of Online Hotel Booking Websites

This dissertation aims to examine the concept of ―online customer experience‖, ―flow‖, and its role in influencing online customers‘ loyalty to a hotel booking website. To achieve this aim, a model was developed, which proposed that online flow is generated by both hedonic and utilitarian website features. A model was developed based on literature review to measure the relationships between the constructs. To initiate this research, a survey approach was taken. After conducting a pilot study, a marketing company was contacted to distribute the link for the online questionnaire. Five hundred and eleven (511) questionnaires were completed by guests who booked a hotel room online. Participants completed the self-administered online questionnaire by answering questions related to their last hotel booking experience. Study results found that hedonic and utilitarian website features affect the flow experience positively. Results highlight that hedonic website features has a stronger effect on the flow experience compared to utilitarian ones. In addition, the results revealed that hedonic features positively impact brand equity and utilitarian features impact trust towards the hotel booking website. Further, both trust and brand equity have significant and positive relationship with e-loyalty. However, according to study results, flow experience does not have a direct significant effect on e-loyalty. The study findings suggest that consumers who are able to achieve a state of flow while shopping online will perceive higher brand equity and trust. Therefore, their perceptions of the brand are improved. With enhanced levels of trust and brand equity, consumers are more likely to build bonds and stay loyal to the hotel booking website. It is important to note that iv enhancing the brand equity and trust via hedonic and utilitarian website features is important to increase loyalty because flow experience does not directly influence loyalty. This study contributes to existing research on flow experience in several ways. Firstly, it developed and tested a model with precursors of flow experience in ecommerce by establishing a link between website features and flow experience. Antecedents and consequences of flow experience can help researchers understand when this experience occurs and what to expect from this optimal experience in online environments. Thus, this study makes a contribution to the existing literature by examining the effects of features of the website on flow experience. It is worth noting that in the model, hedonic website features had the largest impact on flow experience. This is particularly an important contribution, considering that precious related research examined variables such as attractiveness, novelty, playfulness, personal innovativeness, content of the website, interactivity, teleperesence and perceived ease of use as the precursors of flow experience, but they have not examined the website characteristics that derives from shopping orientations. Study results can give hotel booking website designers and marketers a better understanding of the online consumer experiences and loyalt

Online Hotel Booking Experience: Flow Theory, Measuring Online Customer Experience and Managerial Implications

The past decade has perceived a significant development of various Internet technologies including HTML5, Ajax, landing pages, CSS3, social media and SEO to name a few. New web technologies provide opportunities for e-commerce companies to enhance the shopping experiences of their customers. This article focuses the phenomenon of online experiences from a services marketing aspect by concentrating online hotel booking. Successful lodging management strategies have been associated with the creation of experience, which in turn leads to fruitful performance outcomes such as superior financial performance, enhanced brand image, customer loyalty, positive word of mouth and customer satisfaction. E-commerce researchers and practitioners also focus on the phenomenon of online customer experiences. Plentiful of previous studies investigated the precursors and consequences of positive online customer experiences by utilizing various marketing and Information Systems theories, and it was found that online customer experience has numerous positive outcomes for e-commerce companies. This study analyses the previous studies on customer experiences by utilizing flow theory and develops a conceptual framework of customer experiences. Later it proposes and tests a measurement model for online customer experiences. Our findings indicate that for successful e-commerce practices, online shoppers need to reach a state of mind where they engage with the website with total involvement, concentration and enjoyment. The traditional approaches to attract customers in brick-and-mortar commerce are not applicable in online contexts. Therefore, interaction, participation, co-creation, immersion, engagement and emotional hooks are important in e-commerce. Managerial and theoretical implications of positive online customer experiences were discussed

Importance-Performance Analysis of Guest Entertainment Technology Amenities in the Lodging Industry

An assessment of how hotel guests view in-room entertainment-technology amenities was conducted to compare the importance of these technologies to how they performed. In-room entertainment technology continues to evolve in the hotel industry. However, given the multitude of entertainment products available in the marketplace today, hoteliers have little understanding of guests’ expectations and of which in-room entertainment-technology amenities will drive guest satisfaction and increase loyalty to the hotel brand. Given that technology is integral to a hotel stay, this study seeks to evaluate the importance and performance of in-room entertainment-technology amenities. Findings indicate that free-to-guest television (FTG TV) and high-speed Internet access were the two most important inroom entertainment-technology amenities when it comes to the selection of a hotel for both leisure and business travelers. The Importance/Satisfaction Matrix presented in the current study showed that many of the in-room entertainment-technology amenities are currently a low priority for guests. Keywords: importance-performance analysis, hotel, in-room entertainment technologie

Inner- versus Social-driven Travel Motivations among People with Mobility Challenges: Extending the Travel Motivation Interpretation with a New Horizon

Employing Self-determination Theory to explore travel motivational patterns among People with Mobility Challenges, this study extends the travel motivation conceptualization with a distinction of driving forces underlying travel motivations. The revealed variations in travel-facilitating effects and motivation-cultivating mechanisms across a spectrum of differentially driven motivations support the distinction. The cross-context reliability of the distinction was also checked through a challenge-level experimental manipulation. Specifically, the inner-driven self-determined motivations better facilitate PwMC’s travel pursuits when travel challenges are significant, whereas social-driven controlled motivations dominate travel facilitation at low-challenge levels. The support of autonomy, competence, and relatedness is found to facilitate both self-determined and controlled travel motivations, but setting self-determined pursuits apart from controlled pursuits at high-challenge levels. Moreover, this study introduces promising statistical approaches for competitively accurate and efficient comparison of correlated effects, useful for future applications in the tourism field

Barriers to Information Technology Change Project in Hotels

The purpose of this study is to investigate the barriers and the sources of resistance to information technology (IT) change projects in hotel firms and evaluate strategies adopted in seeking to overcome these barriers. Based on an in-depth literature review, the authors developed an interview protocol. The authors will start collecting empirical data soon from the Information Technology Managers and the Hotel General managers in hotels in Orlando, FL. Based on the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first research projects in the field that will provide empirical evidence on barriers to IT change projects and appropriate strategies in hotel companies

Meme marketing: How marketers can drive better engagement using viral memes?

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Combined artificial bee colony algorithm and machine learning techniques for prediction of online consumer repurchase intention

A novel paradigm in the service sector i.e. services through the web is a progressive mechanism for rendering offerings over diverse environments. Internet provides huge opportunities for companies to provide personalized online services to their customers. But prompt novel web services introduction may unfavorably affect the quality and user gratification. Subsequently, prediction of the consumer intention is of supreme importance in selecting the web services for an application. The aim of study is to predict online consumer repurchase intention and to achieve this objective a hybrid approach which a combination of machine learning techniques and Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm has been used. The study is divided into three phases. Initially, shopping mall and consumer characteristic’s for repurchase intention has been identified through extensive literature review. Secondly, ABC has been used to determine the feature selection of consumers’ characteristics and shopping malls’ attributes (with > 0.1 threshold value) for the prediction model. Finally, validation using K-fold cross has been employed to measure the best classification model robustness. The classification models viz., Decision Trees (C5.0), AdaBoost, Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Neural Network (NN), are utilized for prediction of consumer purchase intention. Performance evaluation of identified models on training-testing partitions (70-30%) of the data set, shows that AdaBoost method outperforms other classification models with sensitivity and accuracy of 0.95 and 97.58% respectively, on testing data set. This study is a revolutionary attempt that considers both, shopping mall and consumer characteristics in examine the consumer purchase intention.N/

How can Hospitality Organizations Create IT Induced Competitive Advantage? A Theoretical Framework

This paper investigates the IT-induced competitive advantage in the hospitality industry. Moreover, it attempts to understand the structure of technology benefit stages in the industry since such benefits depend various components such as managements’ perception towards the technology, the sophistication of the deployed technologies, critical resources, and integration of the resources. Owing to the exploratory nature of the study, a semi-structured interview technique was chosen as the main data collection method since it allows a deep, detailed descriptions and imaginative explorations of participants’ ideas and experiences. A sample of members of AHLA E-Commerce and Technology Committee is interviewed. Probing technique will be used during the interview process. The research results indicate that IT induced competitive advantage is possible when hotels choose to invest in technologies with higher management skills and integrate all the possible technologies in the organization with a harmony that creates synergy. Critical resources and the sophistication of the selected technologies are also important

A Study Of Accepted Pricing Points For In-Room Entertainment Technology Amenities By Guests

The influence of a resource subsidy on predator-prey interactions is examined using a mathematical model. The model arises from the study of a biological system involving arctic foxes (predator), lemmings (prey), and seal carcasses (subsidy). In one version of the model, the predator, prey and subsidy all occur in the same location; in a second version, the predator moves between two patches, one containing only the prey and the other containing only the subsidy. Criteria for feasibility and stability of the different equilibrium states are studied both analytically and numerically. At small subsidy input rates, there is a minimum prey carrying capacity needed to support both predator and prey. At intermediate subsidy input rates, the predator and prey can always coexist. At high subsidy input rates, the prey cannot persist even at high carrying capacities. As predator movement increases, the dynamic stability of the predator-prey-subsidy interactions also increases. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Social Networking Websites: Do Generation Y Use Them Before Making Decisions for Hotels and Restaurants?

Individuals have many motivations to visit the Internet such as searching for information, communication, and shopping (Rodgers & Sheldon, 2002). Increasingly those individuals meet online to share their opinions and information, express views, and regularly update their status or post blogs and microblogs. More and more people discuss on forums and exchange information/opinions on social networking websites (Chung & Buhalis, 2009). The case for the hospitality industry is not discovered. There is unlimited number of opportunities that social networking website presents to tourism organizations. This study will investigate the issue from consumers’ point of view. In view of the fact that environmental factors have influenced Generation Y shoppers (who born after 1977) to make them different from older groups (Bakewell & Mitchell, 2003), this study only focuses on Generation Y since 65% of this cohort had booked travel arrangements online in 2008 (Jones & Fox, 2009). A sample of U.S. college students was given an online survey, and the survey returned 512 valid responses. It was found that respondents tend to share their experiences related to their experiences in restaurants and hotels, however, they are not using social networking websites to make decisions