On the relationships between digital brand evidence, relationship quality and behavioural intentions among online tourism agencies’ customers

Apostolos Giovanis,Ioannis Rizomyliotis,Androniki Kavoura

doi:10.54055/ejtr.v30i.2592

Apostolos Giovanis, Ioannis Rizomyliotis + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.54055/ejtr.v30i.2592

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Abstract

This paper aims to propose and empirically validate a measure of brand evidence of Online Travel Agencies (OTA), representing all relevant brand associations that customers are doing when evaluating an online brand, and then investigate its effect in building strong consumer-brand relationships and creating favourable consumer behavioural intentions. To check the validity of the proposed model, a survey of 971 users of OTA platforms in Greece was conducted and data was analysed with PLS. Results fully support the validity of the proposed brand evidence index, as several OTA’s brand related associations that a customer develops, before and during service encounters, shape the index expressing brand evidence. Furthermore, the findings confirmed the significant effects of brand evidence on both brand relationships quality and consumer behavioural intentions towards the brand. The current research effort significantly contributes to the field of digital booking services, as it appears to be the first to measure digital brand evidence and investigate their role to strengthen consumer-brand relationships.

Highlights

Along with the growth of ICTs, doing business in the internet is rapidly gaining importance in the tourism industry in general and in the context of booking services in particular (e.g., Buhalis and Law, 2008; Mouakket and Al-hawari, 2012; Navío-Marco et al, 2018)
This study enhances our knowledge on how digital brand associations are used by customers to assess their online brand experience with Online Travel Agencies (OTA) before and during online booking services usage
Theses associations about the brand were examined as drivers of strong consumer-brand relationships and favourable customers’ behavioural intentions in terms of repurchase intentions and positive WOM

Summary

Introduction

Along with the growth of ICTs, doing business in the internet is rapidly gaining importance in the tourism industry in general and in the context of booking services in particular (e.g., Buhalis and Law, 2008; Mouakket and Al-hawari, 2012; Navío-Marco et al, 2018). Along with the Internet, mobile telecommunication technologies have dramatically transformed the tourism industry, especially travel services distribution channels (Xiang et al, 2015). According to Rezgo (2019), OTA are travel aggregators who sell travel-related services to consumers via the Internet. They establish a connection between customers and offline service providers like hotel, flight, and car hire companies among others. OTA are expanding quickly worldwide (Talwar, et al, 2020) Their market share in the online travel booking market is about forty percent and they have become a significant threat for other companies’ viability (Martin-Fuentes and Mellinas, 2018). The adoption of new technologies and practices, such as consumer intelligence, data mining, and artificial intelligence, accelerate OTA’s business transformation and changes the tourism industry’s future (Buhalis and Sinarta, 2019)

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