Reviewing the Online Tourism Value Chain

Abstract

Abstract:The booking purchase process in B2C tourism online from the perspective of the quality-satisfaction-loyalty value chain has scarcely been investigated. The measurement models of the variables are not unified and essential variables, as transaction costs, need more research in order to achieve a comprehensive model of the digital tourist purchase process. This research is aimed at solving this gap through the proposal of a theoretical structural model, which is tested for the Spanish context. The results show that the measurement of website-perceived quality must include utilitarian and hedonic aspects, which can provide a competitive advantage to acquire and retain customers. Perceived quality and transaction costs determine customer's satisfaction and, ultimately, repurchase intentions or brand loyalty. Prices are found as mediator variables fostering the effect of quality on satisfaction, and non-monetary costs act as a cause of satisfaction. The online B2C tourism business must implement efficient internal and external processes to justify perceived costs.

Cruise Tourism for Sustainability: An Exploration of Value Chain in Shenzhen Shekou Port

“…According to the research for Chinese tourists, senior citizens and kids and parents are two emerging markets. Meanwhile, enriching cruise entertainment facilities, improving service quality, attaching importance to the cultivation of leisure culture, and setting up duty-free shopping centers are by any means necessary [7,8].…”

“…We used the value chain theory of Porter (1985), which enabled us to find the favorable information of enterprise profit growth in the link where customers create reproducible value [7]. We were concerned with customer perception, which is one of the important factors in customer satisfaction, which ultimately determines customers' repurchase intention or brand loyalty and provides competitive advantages for enterprises [8]. It cannot be ignored that the support of local residents and enterprises to tourism development will promote the healthy development of tourism and the successful development of the community [9].…”

Direct and Indirect Tourism Online Channels. Do They Have a Different Potential for Customer Loyalty?

“…This research strand, however, does not consider the participation of customers in the booking process. With the exception of the study about offline travel agencies by Grisseman and Stokburger-Sauer [20] and Berne et al [21], prior research in tourism does not provide an analytical frame of the booking process taking into account the co-production of distribution services and the transaction costs associated to customer participation. Thus, it is important to extend the prior literature including the participation of the customer, specifically in the booking process, considering this as the set of distribution services that are used discretionally by consumers to complete the purchase [22].…”

“…Second, when properly designed and executed, the customer participation in the co-production of the service may provide productivity gains for the company that, seeking for competitive advantages, are passed in the form of lower prices to customers. In this context, co-production has an important role in building customer loyalty [21,29] The inertia, as an antecedent of loyalty intentions, is the effect of past experience on the future usage intentions [30], that is, the purchase repetition based on habit [31]. On the one hand, it is needed to separate this conceptualization of inertia from the channel loyalty based on the perceived service superiority.…”

“…It should be added that these services are supported by the so-called channel policies (privacy policies, means of payment, return, security, prices) that, unlike distribution services, are fixed stably over time and for the generality of clients. In tourism channels, these services have been approached and studied individually or in different combinations [21,33,34].…”