Feeling leads to believing: a Kansei-based approach to explore website users’ purchase intention in the travel agency sector

Abstract

Although website users' affective and cognitive perceptions interactively influence their purchase intention toward a company's website products, little research has simultaneously examined the effects of website users' perceived affective quality (PAQ) and perceived website quality (PWQ) on purchase intention (PI) in the travel agency sector. Particularly, the moderating roles of website users' perceived affective trust (PAT) and perceived cognition trust (PCT) on the PAQ---PWQ---PI interrelationships were explored. To this end, by applying the Kansei engineering approach, this study first collected the positive and negative affective words relevant to four travel product properties on the travel agency websites from related media sources and categorized them using the affinity diagram method. Multiple regression analysis of the interrelationships among PAQ, PWQ, and PI showed that certain PAQs (including content feeling unique, content feeling trustworthy, graphic feeling eye-catching, graphic feeling favorable price, and layout feeling comprehensive) had positive effects on PWQ. However, only certain PAQs (including color feeling relaxing, graphic feeling eye-catching, graphic feeling topical, and layout feeling humanistic) engendered positive effects on PI. Finally, multiple group analysis by structural equation modeling showed that only PAT had a moderating effect on the relationship between PAQ and PWQ. These results suggest that affective factors exerted more significant effects on website users' perceptions and behaviors than did cognitive factors in the travel agency website context. Drawing on the empirical findings, managerial implications and directions for future research are provided.