Customer decision-making processes and motives for self-service technology usage in multi-channel hospitality environments

Abstract

The contemporary hospitality service industry is changing with the introduction of new self-service technologies (SSTs) and their rapid adoption by customers. Examples of SSTs include hotel reservation websites, self check-in kiosks and mobile telephone service applications. The introduction of these electronic channels for communication with customers offers further opportunities for customer relationship management if customers choose to interact with them. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to understand the customer decision-making processes and underlying motivations for SST usage in multi-channel hospitality service environments. The data collection method employed was short qualitative interviews with 133 passengers at the departure area of an international airport. The findings contribute to an understanding of how and why customers use SSTs, which is critical from an eCRM perspective, in that many sectors of the hospitality industry may encourage or indeed require customers to use SSTs. As a result, this element of chosen/forced usage may have a huge impact on the user-company relationship.