Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology

Chai, Joe Choon Yean ; Malhotra, Naresh K ; Dash, Satyabhusan

2015 Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology

doi: 10.1108/JHTT-08-2014-0035

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of relational bonding on intention and loyalty and the mediating role of commitment foci in the service context. Design/methodology/approach – The study used a cross-sectional and quantitative mail survey approach. Bank customers in New Zealand were surveyed, and multiple analytical techniques were used to measure the relationships between consumer bonding, commitment foci and loyalty behavioral intentions and the mediating role of commitment foci in service relationships. Findings – The results confirm that commitment foci or targets of commitment are important mediators in the relationships between bonding and loyalty-related behavioral intentions. The findings provide new theoretical knowledge about the mediating effect of the commitment foci in service relationships and significantly enhance knowledge about consumers’ intention and loyalty. Practical implications – The research provides several noteworthy insights into the role of social and structural bonding in consumers’ commitment and loyalty in the service context, as well as provides an important implication for segmentation. Originality/value – The study contributes to the service research on consumers’ intention and loyalty behavior toward the commitment foci. Introducing the role of commitment foci as a mediating mechanism within the context of a service encounter is new in the services marketing literature. This study provides a better understanding of consumers’ perceptions of and behaviors toward the commitment foci, as well as their intention and loyalty.

Duverger, Philippe

2015 Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology

doi: 10.1108/JHTT-10-2014-0063

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how negatively worded innovative ideas can be rejected during a crowdsourcing event sponsored by a service firm via an online forum. The goal of an ideation forum is to collect user-generated content in the form of ideas for new products or services. An ideation forum attempts to clarify the “fuzziness” on the front-end of new product development. Design/methodology/approach – A 2 × 2 (satisfied/dissatisfied customers and negatively/positively worded ideas) experiment replicates the effect of mood-incongruent interactions within ideation forums and measures the likelihood for an idea to be buried or selected on the basis of its merit rather than its negative/positive wording. Findings – The results demonstrate that mood-incongruent interactions have different effects on different groups of participating customers. Negatively worded innovative ideas are rated lower by satisfied customers, despite their superior merit. Research limitations/implications – The nature of the experiment shows a high validity, but lacks in reliability. Thus, future research should attempt to replicate this experiment on a larger scale and across different industries. Practical implications – In an open forum where thousands of customers can give a thumbs’ up or down to an idea, merit should prevail over mood-congruency. If the crowdsourcing mechanism cannot be trusted, it puts the burden back on the firm’s review team to promote or review any downgraded innovative idea, which ends up being counterproductive. Originality/value – These findings shed light on the hidden aspect of crowdsourcing when the aim is to find unique, if not radical, ideas for services. Thus, hoteliers and other hospitality and tourism managers should use these findings to design better ideation forums.

Rivera, Manuel ; Gregory, Amy ; Cobos, Liza

2015 Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology

doi: 10.1108/JHTT-01-2015-0002

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine consumer perceptions toward the adoption of mobile technology within the vacation ownership/timeshare segment of the hospitality industry. Despite the proliferation of mobile applications in the greater hospitality and tourism industry, few timeshare companies use this technology. However, customers have expressed strong intentions to use technology. Therefore, this study examines consumers’ attitudes toward and experiences with mobile applications and then through the use of a prototype, examines consumers’ intentions to use a mobile application. The relationships between attitude, experience and usefulness are explored in relation to intention to use. Design/methodology/approach – Consumers that owned timeshares in the Orlando area responded to an online survey invitation from their resort management company. The survey instrument gathered data related to consumers’ attitudes toward and experiences with technology using established measures. A total of 914 surveys were collected and the proposed model was analyzed using path analysis. Findings – Findings indicate that traditional technology adoption antecedents (experience, usefulness and attitude) explain timeshare owners’ intentions to use a mobile application. This is consistent with prior research. However, using established measures, the model explained consumers’ intentions to use the technology with greater certainty than what previous research has reported. Research limitations/implications – The most encouraging and noteworthy implications from the findings are threefold. First, timeshare owners are using mobile technology while traveling (mobile phones, tablets and laptops). The owners’ experiences with mobile devices exert a positive influence that moderates intention to use. In addition, the impact of technology experience on intent to use is mediated by perceived usefulness and attitudes toward the application. Though the sample size was large, limitations do exist, as those surveyed were all owners of a single timeshare resort based in Orlando, Florida. Originality/value – In studies reported to date, there is scarce empirical research regarding mobile application adoption for timeshare owners or information about the factors that drive usage, attitude and adoption. This study discusses important insights about mobile services for an industry that lacks research in information technology.

Memarzadeh, Faranak ; Blum, Shane C. ; Adams, Charlie

2015 Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology

doi: 10.1108/JHTT-09-2014-0049

Purpose – This paper aims to find out the impact of business travelers’ behavioral belief on positive and negative e-comments, which consequently lead to intention to purchase a hotel room. To explore the relationships among attitude toward positive and negative e-comments with intention to purchase, the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) was used. Design/methodology/approach – Business travelers in the USA who read e-comments and made a hotel choice based on those e-comments within the past six months were targeted for this study. The TRA, as well as a wide-ranging review of literature, were used to develop the survey instrument. The survey was distributed through Qualtrics, which is an online questionnaire service platform. To measure the business travelers’ behavioral beliefs toward e-comments, a number of measures were developed for this research. The theories of Fishbein and Ajzen were used to examine business travelers’ behavioral beliefs toward positive and negative e-comments. All of the questions on this survey about the intention to purchase were extracted from Liao et al . Other questions about attitude toward positive and negative comments were adopted from Chu and Choi, Sparks and Browning, Gundersen et al. and Lee and Sparks. The last section of the survey included questions about business travelers’ sociodemographic statistics, such as ethnicity, level of income, age, gender and education. The first question separated respondents to recognize those who made a reservation at a business hotel in the past six months after reading comments about the hotel. Those who responded positively were asked to participate in the study. Participants of this research presented their degree of agreement on each item by using a seven-point Likert scale, rating from (1) “Strongly disagree” to (7) “Strongly agree”. To verify the reliability of the questionnaire and to ensure it reflected the TRA, a pilot study was conducted with a small group of business travelers who had booked a hotel room in the past six months and finalized their purchases based on reading e-comments. No major changes were made to the survey as a result of the pilot study and all factors indicated an adequate level of internal consistency. The proposed model examined the effects of both positive and negative e-comments toward business travelers’ intention to purchase. This research aimed to determine the impact of behavioral belief on positive e-comments and negative e-comments, which consequently lead to intention to purchase. Findings – The results of the proposed model revealed that behavioral belief positively affects both positive and negative e-comments. This means that business travelers want to be informed about both complaints and compliments in e-comments. However, this does not mean they intend to purchase a hotel room based on both opinions; rather business travelers would be inclined to purchase a hotel room based on positive e-comments. Using gender as a moderating effect indicated that females neither believe of the helpfulness of negative e-comments nor intend to purchase based on these e-comments. However, males tend to find both positive and negative e-comments helpful. Originality/value – The findings of this research will help hoteliers, as well as online website review operators, to obtain a clearer understanding of guests’ or users’ needs and wants in order to offer a more desirable service. Since business travelers are considered an important target market in the hotel industry, hoteliers need to put more emphasize on these factors to attract more business travelers. By recognizing business travelers’ requirements and their expectations, hoteliers should prioritize their responsibilities for meeting these guests’ expectations; therefore, they can assign their resources accordingly. In other words, once a guest’s needs are understood clearly, hoteliers will be in safe position to provide the desired service.

Bahri-Ammari, Nedra ; Nusair, Khaldoon

2015 Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology

doi: 10.1108/JHTT-08-2014-0042

Purpose – This study aims to show the contribution of the determinants of customer relationship management (CRM), namely, customer-centric organizational culture and customer-centric management system, in explaining CRM performance. The moderating role of employee support has also been examined. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire was administered to 406 CRM users in 15 four- and five-star hotels in Tunisia. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings – The results show that a consumer-centric managerial system positively affects CRM technology. Managerial system contributes to have an efficient CRM technology implemented that provides sales force with customer information, competitor information, leads for cross-sell/up-sell opportunities, tracks product availability and measures customer loyalty. These dimensions are negatively affected by a consumer-centric organizational culture. CRM technology once implemented with an adapted consumer-centric vision will enhance the CRM performance. Moreover, the use of CRM technology by employees leads to higher performance. CRM performance can improve when different CRM components are used and supported by employee. Exchange of relevant information that provides technology can improve in regaining lost customers, in acquiring customers and in improving the total return per customer and reducing customer migration. Practical implications – The findings help managers to consider adopting a customer-oriented CRM strategy that considers all the variables that may affect the performance of this technology (initiation, maintenance and retention). Companies will be able to reconsider some notions related to CRM strategies: restructuring the human factor, disseminating information, changing hotel culture and training of users. Originality/value – This study is the first to explain CRM performance in Tunisian hotels. It helps to highlight the importance of the visitors’ behavior in hotels, which explains, among other things, the difficulty of maintaining long-lasting relationship with hotel guests, despite a good system management and a good customer-centric culture.

S, Sreejesh ; Mitra, Amarnath ; Sahoo, Debjani

2015 Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology

doi: 10.1108/JHTT-10-2014-0061

Purpose – This paper aims to provide empirical evidence of relationship between perceived service innovativeness, image-congruence, satisfaction and behavioral outcomes at the customer level. It hypothesizes a moderated mediation model, denoting that perceived service innovativeness relates to image-congruity dimensions, which, in turn, will promote satisfaction at cognitive and affective level, thereby creating strong behavioral outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected through online surveys. The survey aimed at measuring the hypothesized constructs and other study-relevant information. Hypotheses were tested using the structural equation modeling technique. Findings – This paper validates the role of perceived service innovativeness as a mechanism facilitating development and transfer of customer’s image-congruence toward a service firm. It also finds that the image-congruity dimensions fully mediate the relationship between perceived innovativeness and satisfaction. The resultant customer satisfaction leads to the development of behavioral outcomes. Further, the study finds that perceived innovativeness have varying effects on image-congruence dimensions depending upon customer’s prior experience. Practical implications – The study provides evidence to managers that the customer-centric value creation through image-congruence requires development of positive perceived service innovativeness, which will result in customer satisfaction and their behavioral outcomes. Originality/value – The study is the first attempt to find empirical support for the role of perceived service innovativeness to create customer’s image congruity with a service firm. Further, analyzing how perceived service innovativeness, image-congruence, customer satisfaction and behavioral outcomes are related to each other is also an important contribution.

Zhang, Tingting (Christina) ; Kandampully, Jay ; Bilgihan, Anil

2015 Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology

doi: 10.1108/JHTT-10-2014-0062

Purpose – This paper aims to propose an extended model to examine these motivations. As technology-led changes have revolutionized the marketplace, researchers and practitioners have grown keen to understand customers’ motivations for engaging in co-innovation in online communities. Design/methodology/approach – The research model is based on a review of previous literature and relevant business practices. Findings – The proposed conceptual model can be used to test empirically and explicate customers’ attitude towards engagement in co-innovation communities in the hospitality industry. Three major motivations drive customer engagement in online co-innovation communities (OCCs): brand equity, sense of community and monetary incentive. Customers’ prior experience with co-innovation projects also moderates the effects of the three motivations on customers’ attitude towards engagement in OCCs. Practical implications – The proposed model highlights the importance of engaging customers through OCCs to create service innovations. These OCCs advance customers’ active participation in the firm’s co-creation and co-innovation process. Leading service firms already rely on online brand communities to stay on the cutting edge. Co-creation represents a unique, strategic partnership between the firm and the customer that can enhance both the customer experience and the firm’s innovativeness. Originality/value – This study provides an initial exploration of the key components of the co-innovation of service through online communities in the hospitality industry.