The Impact of Social Shopping and Customization Support on Students' Intentions to Purchase Online Travel

AbstractThis paper investigates how e-Business can benefit from serving students with social decision and service customization support. We test whether the social richness of online shopping in pairs, connected by screen sharing technology, contributes to a greater intent to book vacation travel. Furthermore, we test the value of allowing for high customization. We conducted a controlled laboratory experiment and a field experiment with a total of 391 subjects. A Partial Least Squares analysis of Perceived Effectiveness, Perceived Enjoyment, Perceived Partner Quality, Opinion Seeker and Opinion Leader, combined to explain Intent to Purchase with high variance explained (61.6%). We found significant differences between high-customization and low-customization groups. The high-customization group had a lower intent to purchase, but with greater variance explained (73.7%). The low-customization group had greater intent to purchase, but with lesser variance explained (50.0%). The results shed light on the value proposition for offering social and customization support to students. Future research will extend the results to other populations, task domains and devices.Keywords: Social decision support, customization support, student travel, intent to purchaseIntroductionGeneration Y Students (born between 1981 and 1990) are online up to three hours per day for entertainment, peer communication, shopping and entertainment (Interactive 2006). They tend to shop socially, relying on friends and family for advice and approval, more so than any other age group (Sirgy, Grewal and Mangleburg 2000; Johnstone and Conroy 2006).Social decision support is one way to reach students. Customization support, a growing trend in electronic business (Pine 1993; Tu, Vonderembse, Ragu-Nathan and Ragu-Nathan 2004; Tu, Vondermebse and Ragu-Nathan 2004; Tu, Xie and K. Fung 2007), is another way. Generation Y Students are the most likely age group to customize products online, particularly automobiles, computer hardware, greeting cards, apparel and consumer electronics (Johnson and Huit 2007). Socially-based computing is a phenomenon which appears to have strong promise in online retailing (Tedeschi 2006).This study examined the intersection of Social and Customization factors among Generation Y students. Our purpose is to address how social and customization factors interplay to affect intention to purchase. The results of this study shed light on their online travel planning, and it provides guidance to web site designers incorporating various kinds of decision support into online travel planning applications. Future research will extend the results to other task domains and devices, e.g., the mobile telephone.Literature ReviewFundamentally, effort is the key factor in decision making (Davis 1989; Todd and Benbasat 1992; Benbasat and Todd 1996). Decision makers tend to adapt their strategy selection to the type of decision aids available in such a way as to reduce effort (Todd and Benbasat 1991). Spending extensive time and effort without converging upon an adequate choice can easily lead to uncertainty and abandonment of the search process. In a study of college students' online vacation travel planning, the more time that was used to search for an online vacation, the less the likelihood of achieving higher levels of satisfaction (Bai, Hu, Eisworth and Countryman 2005).With socially well-connected individuals, such as Generation Y students, the converging to a desirable choice can be achieved simply by sufficient social validation. That is, if a small number of trusted friends validate the individual's tentative choice, it becomes acceptable. Travel planning in pairs can decrease the real and perceived search effort. In the case of student travel, customers' satisfaction derives from low effort as much as discounted price (Kim, Kim and Han 2007).Students are particularly sensitive to peer pressure (Johnson and Huit 2007; Temkin, Popoff-Walker, Melnikova and Geller 2007; Temkin and Popoff-Walker 2007), since social validation is important to them (Lueg and Ponder 2006). …