How do the preferences of online buyers and browsers differ on the design and content of travel websites?

The Authors
Rob Law, School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong Billy Bai, William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Acknowledgements
This project was partly supported by a research grant funded by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (under contract number: A-PG87).

Abstract
Purpose The issue of perceptions between buyers who have made online purchases and browsers who have browsed websites on the quality of travel websites is rarely, if ever, investigated by tourism and hospitality researchers. This paper aims to report on a study that examined these two groups of users' perceived importance of the factors that contribute to content richness and ease of use of travel websites. In addition, it seeks to study these users' level of satisfaction and purchase intention. Design/methodology/approach A total of 862 international travelers were interviewed in Hong Kong International Airport in October 2005. Findings Empirical findings indicated that travel website users viewed quality factors important, and they were generally satisfied with travel websites. Although these website users had a positive view for purchase intention in the long term, there existed significant differences between the two groups of users in all attributes of customer satisfaction and purchase intention. Most importantly, research findings showed that travel website quality factors were positively correlated to customer satisfaction, which in turn, was significantly correlated to purchase intention. Research limitations/implications The generalization of this research is limited by its time scope and sample size. Originality/value This paper should be of interest to tourism and hospitality practitioners as well as academic researchers to better understand e-consumers' behavior.

Article Type:
Research paper

Keyword(s):
Travel; Worldwide web; Customer satisfaction.

Journal:
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

Volume:
20

Number:
4

Year:
2008

pp:
388-400

Copyright
Emerald Group Publishing Limited

ISSN:
0959-6119 Introduction The growth and popularity of the internet in travel and tourism have been widely documented in the existing literature (Burns, 2006a). Despite the presence of numerous travel websites and practitioners' eagerness to learn e-consumers' behavior, the published articles virtually have rarely examined the perceptions of online purchasers and website browsers on website quality, customer satisfaction, and their purchase intention. The absence of prior studies is particularly true in the context of international travelers who have had experience of using travel websites. Apparently, prior studies have largely concentrated on website analyses (Chung and Law, 2003; Morrison et al., 1999), log file data (Murphy et al., 2001), and social adaptability (Lu and Yeung, 1998). Other studies have profiled internet users (Bonn et al., 1998; Weber and Roehl, 1999), and examined users' perception on website features (Shankar et al., 2003; Wolf et al., 2004). Tourism researchers, however, have rarely investigated the perception of users on travel website quality, customer satisfaction, and purchase intention, and more importantly, the interrelationship among these dimensions. In view of the increasing importance of the internet

in tourism and hospitality, and the scarcity of studies as such, this exploratory study investigated the perceived importance of website quality factors in terms of functionality and usability, agreement on customer satisfaction for using travel websites, and the likelihood of making online purchase on travel websites from the perspectives of buyers and browsers. In other words, this study aims to provide a better understanding of perceived website quality, satisfaction of e-consumers, users' purchase intention, and their interaction in the virtual environment. In this study, buyers are defined as the e-consumers who had made purchase(s) on travel website(s) in the past 12 months. Additionally, browsers are the internet users who had browsed travel website(s) in the past 12 months. A total of 12 months were determined as a suitable time frame as Cheng, Lam and Hsu showed that 12 months are an appropriate recall period (Cheng et al., 2005). In this study, the term browsers collectively refers to the people who conduct a wide range of online activities except purchase(s). Drawing on the findings of this research, industry practitioners are expected to have a clearer view of the preferences from different potential customers, which in turn, would assist the practitioners to utilize their limited resources to meet the requirements of different groups of customers. The background of this study has been discussed in the previous paragraphs. The next section reviews the related literature that is pertained to the issue of website quality, customer satisfaction, and purchase intention. Next, there is a methodology section that presents the questionnaire preparation and how the survey was carried out. The section after that discusses empirical findings. At last, there is a concluding section that summarizes the research, offers industrial recommendations, and provides hints for future research. Literature review Different statistical data have shown the rapid growth of the online tourism and hospitality industries. For instance, Burns (2006a) stated that US$60.9 million was spent on travel retails through the internet in 2005, representing a 20 percent increase over the previous year. In another study, McGann (2004) predicted that the amount of US online travel booking revenues in 2009 would reach US$91 billion and this represents 33 percent of total US travel revenues, up from US$46 billion and 20 percent in 2003. The growth of e-tourism is further ascertained by Kerner (2005) who stated that 88 percent of consumers who had gone or planned to travel in summer of 2005 used the internet to search and purchase their trips. The same study showed online hotel accommodation sales were also increased to 52 percent in 2005, up from 40 percent in the previous year. In response to this promising growth, researchers and practitioners have expressed their interests of examining the factors that lead to successful tourism and hospitality websites. Since the late 1990s, there has been a growing amount of interests on website evaluations. Generally speaking, there are two mainstreams on researching website quality, namely content richness and ease of use (Bevan, 2001; Huizingh, 2000; Nielsen, 2003; Palmer, 2002). Lu and Yeung (1998) initially classified the quality and usefulness of a website comprise functionality and usability, but no further explanations on these terms were provided. Similarly, World Best Enterprises (2004) stated that design and contents are two of the most essential factors that contribute to the success of business websites. While the term is loosely defined, usability generally refers to the interface design or degree of ease with which users can use a website (Nielsen, 1999, 2000). Functionality, however, examines the extent to which a website provides sufficient information about the products/services being promoted (Chung and Law, 2003). In the tourism context, Au Yeung and Law (2006) as well as Law and Ngai (2005) developed a list of attributes in five dimensions for usability of travel and

hotel websites. These dimensions consisted of language, layout and graphics, information architecture, user interface and navigation, and general. Similarly, the functionality attributes of hotel websites were identified in five dimensions by Chung and Law (2003) and Liang and Law (2003). These functionality dimensions included facilities information, customer information, reservation information, surrounding area information, and management of website. The importance of usability on travel websites from the human-computer interaction perspective was further ascertained by Xiang and Fesenmaier (2004). Similarly, Ross (2005) and Chu (2001) emphasized the importance of having informative content on a travel website. Burns (2006b) claimed that perspective buyers left e-commerce websites for a few reasons, and poor content and difficulties to use are two of these reasons. The ultimate goal of setting up a business website is for profit making. However, whether a customer finally makes a purchase on the website largely depends on the level of satisfaction and trust that the customer feels towards the website (Lee, 2002). Apparently, the availability of needed information and ease of navigation are the necessary conditions for satisfaction determination. As such, marketing researchers have long been emphasizing the importance of customer satisfaction. In a broad sense, Oliver (1980) defined customer satisfaction as the evaluation from customers on whether a product or service can meet their requirements. Oliver (1993) further claimed that customer satisfaction is closely related to the perceived service quality, in which service quality is the antecedent of customer satisfaction. In the virtual environment, Anderson and Srinivasan (2003) defined e-satisfaction as the satisfaction of customers with respect to their prior purchase experiences on the electronic channel, and they further adopted Oliver's (1980) instrument to measure customer satisfaction in eretailing. The understanding of customers' purchase intention is also important as customers' behavior can be predicted through their intention. According to Day (1969), when purchase is considered, the intentional measures can be more effective than behavioral measures to capture consumers' mind as consumers may make purchases due to constraints instead of real preference. Furthermore, Oliver (1999) argued that customer satisfaction can lead to customer loyalty, which implies that satisfied customers are willing to buy the same products again in the future. Anderson and Srinivasan (2003) studied the impact of satisfaction on loyalty in ecommerce, and concluded that e-satisfaction has an impact on e-loyalty but the relationship is moderated by individual factors of customers and business factors of firms. Lastly, Shim et al. (2001) attempted to examine the intention to search the internet for product information as a key element in predicting consumers' online purchase intention. Experimental results showed using the internet to search for information was the strongest predictor of internet purchase intention, and there existed a direct relationship between the two antecedents (attitude towards online shopping and prior online purchase experience). To summarize, it would be crucial for tourism and hospitality practitioners to understand how the quality of their websites affects the satisfaction of their customers, and more importantly, the impact of website quality and customer satisfaction on customer purchase intention. In view of this arising challenge, this study makes an attempt to examine the relationship among these factors. Methodology This study is a major component of the Omnibus Survey 2005 which was conducted by the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at a local university in Hong Kong. The Survey

aimed at examining different behaviors of non-transit tourists who were not residents in Hong Kong. On the basis of previous studies on customer satisfaction (Anderson and Srinivasan, 2003; Oliver, 1980, 1993), functionality (Chung and Law, 2003; Liang and Law, 2003), and usability (Au Yeung and Law, 2006; Law and Ngai, 2005), a structured questionnaire was developed. The questionnaire consisted of two sections, with 18 questions in the first section to seek for respondents' views on different attributes in the dimensions of functionality factors (five attributes), usability factors (five attributes), customer satisfaction (six attributes), and purchase intention (two attributes) in the first section. Respondents were requested to state their perception of different questions on a seven-point Likert scale with 1=very unimportant, 2=unimportant, 3=somewhat unimportant, 4=neither important nor unimportant, 5=somewhat important, 6=important, and 7=very important for the questions in functionality and usability factors. The questions in customer satisfaction was in a scale of 1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=somewhat disagree, 4=neither agree nor disagree, 5= somewhat agree, 6=agree, and 7=strongly agree. Another scale of 1=very unlikely, 2= unlikely, 3=somewhat unlikely, 4=neither likely nor unlikely, 5=somewhat likely, 6= likely, and 7=very likely was used for the two questions of purchase intention. At the beginning, there was a qualifying question that asked whether the respondent had ever visited any travel website(s) in the past 12 months. Qualified respondents were then asked whether they had made any purchases on travel websites in the past 12 months, and this question was used to separate the buyers from browsers. The second section was for demographic variables that were related to respondents' gender, age, education, income, and country/region of residence. Since the questionnaire was used to interview both Western and Asian visitors, the original English questionnaire was translated to Chinese. A backtranslation process was used to ensure that both questionnaires had the same meaning. To ensure the content validity and comprehensiveness, the questionnaire was pilot-tested in tourism spots at the city center of Hong Kong on September 28, 2005 with 20 visitors. Some minor adjustments were made in response to the comments received from the participants. The large-scale survey was then carried out in the restricted departure area of the Hong Kong International Airport in the period October 3-22, 2005. A team of nine interviewers was recruited to conduct face-to-face interviews with visitors from seven major source markets, including Chinese Mainland (Mainland China), Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, the USA, Australia, and Western Europe. The interviews were conducted at the specific departure gates that were approved by the Hong Kong Airport Authority that managed the airport. During that period, each interviewer was assigned to one of the two eight-hour shifts starting from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30p.m. A quota of eight completed cases per shift was assigned to each interviewer. The interviewers were to clarify or explain if the respondents have any queries. At the end, 1,282 visitors were successfully interviewed, and 862 of them have visited at least one travel website in the past 12 months. In this exploratory research, descriptive statistics were used to analyze the demographic data of the respondents. Chi-square tests were used to distinguish between buyers and browsers in different groups of categorical demographic variables. Chi-square tests are commonly used for ordinal data, i.e. data in an order of sequence. Numerous published articles in tourism and hospitality journals have made such an attempt. Muijs (2004, p. 125) states that a condition for using Chi-square test is that the two variables we are looking at have to be nominal or ordinal. In addition, independent sample t-tests were used to identify the differences between the two groups of travel website users for their perception on the variables of different dimensions. Finally, correlation coefficients were applied to examine the relationship among

different dimensions. A limitation of this study is the sample that may exhibit potential bias towards visitors with different cultures. More specifically, 45.1 percent of the respondents were Asian travelers but only 31.6 percent of these Asian travelers were online buyers. However, with 862 respondents, the sample size should be large enough to provide comprehensive results. Findings and analysis Demographics of respondents Among the respondents who had visited at least one travel website, 445 were buyers and 416 were browsers, representing 51.7 and 48.3 percent of the qualified sample (Table I). The numbers of male and female respondents were about the same. The largest group of these travel website users was aged 26-35, graduates of universities or colleges, with annual household income of at least US$100,000, and from Chinese Mainland and the USA. Chisquare tests indicated significant differences between buyers and browsers in all demographics variables. Specifically, the propensity to purchase on travel websites increased with increasing age, education level, and income. Such findings were in accordance with prior studies on travel website users' behavior (Bonn et al., 1998; Law and Wong, 2003). Since travel is a luxury good (Gee et al., 1997), it would be natural for the senior and affluent respondents to become buyers. In addition, with the exception of Singapore, less short-haul Asian travelers tended to buy on travel websites. This finding was similar to Law et al.'s (2004) study on disintermediation of travel agents. This finding also indicated that travelers from Western countries were more likely to become buyers than Asian travelers. Different from prior studies which showed the insignificant difference between male and female website users (Bonn et al., 1998; Law and Wong, 2003), gender in this study was a significant variable between buyers and browsers. Apparently, more male respondents tended to be buyers than female respondents. On the contrary, McGann (2005) stated that 64.6 percent of women who searched for flights online had made an online ticket purchase whereas the corresponding number for men was only 59 percent. The difference in findings between genders in this study was likely due to the different samples. It would, however, be worthwhile to further examine the online purchasing behavior between genders in a future study. Perceptions of different dimensions Table II shows the perceptions of buyers and browsers on the attributes of different dimensions. These dimensions included functionality factors which are related to content, usability factors for design, customer satisfaction that is associated with degree of contentment, and the intention to purchase in the short term (six months) and long term (two years). The five attributes in the functionality factors were perceived as important with mean values ranged from 5.90 for services/products information to 6.20 for quality of information. Among these five attributes, three exhibited significant differences between buyers and browsers. Specifically, buyers perceived quality of information, purchase information, and services/products information significantly more important than the browsers. Similar to functionality factors, travel website users perceived the usability factors as somewhat important to important with means extended from 5.48 for layout and graphics to 6.27 for

language. In addition, buyers viewed user interface and navigation significantly more important than browsers. Seemingly, the prior experience of buyers and browsers rendered such differences in usability and functionality factors. Moreover, respondents somewhat agreed with all but one of the six attributes in the dimension of customer satisfaction. Respondents, however, had a neutral view on the question of revisiting the travel website. It is important to note that all attributes in customer satisfaction showed significant differences between buyers and browsers, and buyers had a more positive view in relation to satisfaction with the exception of revisiting travel websites. Such differences were expected as buyers should be satisfied with travel websites prior to their online purchase. Lastly, the respondents were likely to make online purchase within the next two years (mean=5.62) and somewhat likely to purchase online within the next six months (mean=4.67). Significant differences were shown between buyers and browsers, with buyers having a higher intention to make online purchase on travel websites in both short and long terms. Relationships among different dimensions The relationship among the dimensions of functionality factors, usability factors, customer satisfaction, and purchase intention are represented in correlation coefficients. Table III shows the values of Pearson correlation for all travel website users, and the corresponding values for buyers and browsers are shown in Tables IV and V. As revealed in Table III, all relationships between different dimensions exhibited moderate positive correlation and were significant at a 0.05 level. In other words, functionality factors and usability factors were positively associated with each other, and these two dimensions were also positively correlated to customer satisfaction, as well as purchase intention in the short term and long term. In addition, customer satisfaction was positively associated with purchase intention in both short and long terms. These positively inter-correlated associations suggested that an improvement in travel website quality would enhance customer satisfaction, which in turn can lead to a higher level of purchase intention. When the perceptions of buyers and browsers were examined separately, similar patterns of correlation coefficients for all travel website users were found. In particular, all correlation coefficients were significantly positive for buyers (Table IV); whereas all correlation coefficients except usability and purchase intention, both in short term and long term, were significant for browsers (Table V). The insignificant correlation coefficients for browsers were likely due to their absence of online purchasing experience, and hence the low purchase intention. Conclusions and recommendations This exploratory study has made an initial attempt to examine online customers' perceptions of quality of travel websites measured in functionality and usability factors, their satisfaction with travel websites, and their purchase intention. Empirical evidence showed significant differences between buyers and browsers in their demographic profile and perception on several attributes in functionality and usability. More importantly, buyers were significantly more positive on customer satisfaction and purchase intention than browsers. As indicated in this study, the percentages of buyers and browsers among the travel website users were about the same. It would, therefore, be beneficial to find out the strategies of how to convert the

browsers to buyers. An approach to achieve such a conversion goal is to offer products/service with more competitive prices on travel websites than offline distribution channels. In addition, the differences in prices between online and offline purchases should be clearly stated on travel websites. In spite of the limited scope of time frame and sample size, findings of this study do offer some important implications for tourism practitioners. First, this study showed 67.2 percent of the interviewed international visitors were travel website users in 2005, which is higher than the corresponding percentage of 52.9 percent for visitors in 2001 (Law et al., 2004), and is much higher than the corresponding percentage of 22.5 percent for Hong Kong residents in 2000 (Law and Wong, 2003). More importantly, 51.6 percent of travel website users had purchased on travel websites in 2005, whereas the corresponding percentages in 2001 and 2000 were 38.3 percent for visitors and 6.5 percent for Hong Kong residents respectively. It is encouraging to note such increases in percentage of travel website users and buyers. Although these increases are likely due to the effect of technology adoption, the changes strongly indicate the efforts and resources that the tourism and hospitality industries have invested on their websites have generated positive results. This finding of active purchasing on travel websites should provide ongoing incentives for practitioners to continue devoting time and resources on their online distribution channels to attract e-consumers to visit and ultimately to purchase. Based on the historical records in the past several years, Jarvis (2006) argues that the trend for booking travel and holidays online will continue to increase. Findings of this study, therefore, should contribute to benefit tourism and hospitality professionals to maintain their websites accordingly in response to such an ongoing increase. On the basis of this study's empirical findings, tourism and hospitality managers should perform the following tasks in order to take advantage of the promising growth of the online travel industry:

First, tourism and hospitality practitioners should apply the appropriate attributes as presented in this research to their own websites. In this way, the general performance of their websites can be determined. Additionally, tourism and hospitality managers should regularly inspect and continuously improve the content and design of their websites to ensure that they are always rich in content and easy to use. In addition to the functionality and usability factors, managers should pay attention to other factors that are related to the success of websites. Examples of these related factors include search engine visibility, website security checks, clarity of business effectiveness, and network traffic patterns. More importantly, managers should analyze the collected customer data for marketing purpose, and to provide active customer support in order to maintain the popularity of their websites. It is only through their pleasant online experience, consumers will visit (and re-visit) travel websites and eventually to purchase.

Future studies on the topic can be done in several ways to further analyze consumer behavior in the virtual environment. First, it would be beneficial if future research efforts can be devoted to investigating the issue using sophisticated models such as structural equation modeling or regression. For instance, the technology acceptance model (TAM) as proposed by Davis (1993) would be a worthwhile future attempt. Another extension of this study is to repeat the research but with a large sample size of international travelers who are from a

wider geographical area and cultural diversity. Such an attempt can lead to the more generalized understanding of travel website users' behavior. Also, it would be useful to investigate the extent to which the users have used travel websites, location for using the travel websites, and monetary amount that buyers have spent. Lastly, an attempt to find out what exactly users look for on travel websites, and the subsequent development to meet users' expectation would be of paramount importance. This attempt, however, requires a non-trivial amount of resources and commitment from senior executives but the ultimate outcomes should benefit the entire tourism and hospitality industries.

Table IDemographic profile of the respondents

Table IIPerceptions of buyers and browsers on different attributes

Table IIIRelationship between different dimensions (all users)

Table IVRelationship between different dimensions (buyers)

Table VRelationship between different dimensions (browsers)

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Corresponding author
Rob Law can be contacted at: hmroblaw@polyu.edu.hk