How Hotel Brand Website Contributes to Online Hotel Reservation on Consumer Review Website?

Abstract

While past research only attempted to investigate the impact of consumer review website characteristics on the hotel reservation behavior, this study incorporated both characteristics of hotel brand website and consumer review website into consideration. Impacts of the two types of websites on reservation behaviors in consumer review websites were examined. The moderating effects of consumer involvement and risk aversion factors were also considered. Three hundred and two respondents from the questionnaire survey were chosen from Bangkok metropolitan population aged 25-60, who experienced with online hotel reservations. The findings show that apart from the review website's ease of use, information usefulness and price offered, brand website's information usefulness also has positive impact on consumers' decisions on the review website. However, brand website's ease of use discourages the usage of the review website. High-risk aversion consumers tend to use the review websites, while high-involvement consumers pay less intention to the review websites' information usefulness and are unlikely to use them. These findings will help managers effectively manage and design decision algorithm for their multi-channels of hotel ecommerce. The results explain dynamic, search sequence and interrelationship of current traveler's behaviors. The source of their hotel search is both consumer review website and hotel brand website.