The Relative Impact of Wi-Fi Service on Young Consumers’ Hotel Booking Online

This study aims to investigate the relative impact of Wi-Fi on consumers’ hotel bookings. It investigates two dimensions of Wi-Fi (price and reviews) in relation to overall hotel ratings, brand, and price per night. A scenario was arranged whereby participants (n = 120) booked a hotel room online. The results (r = .991, p = .000) of a conjoint analysis show that Wi-Fi price and Wi-Fi reviews affect the consumers’ booking, but not as much as hotel ratings and price per night. When looking only at Wi-Fi, results show that previous guests’ Wi-Fi reviews have a higher impact on booking than Wi-Fi price. Further analysis shows that Wi-Fi can be a “deal breaker” in a competitive and/or undifferentiated market. We propose that the impact of Wi-Fi can be understood as rule-governed behavior. Consequently, behavioral understanding of the impact of Wi-Fi could aid hotel managers in developing more effective marketing strategies.

[1]  Niklas Eriksson,et al.  User categories of mobile travel services , 2014 .

[2]  Marco Vriens,et al.  Solving marketing problems with conjoint analysis , 1994 .

[3]  Lorenzo Cantoni,et al.  Tourists and Municipal Wi-Fi Networks (MWN): The Case of Lugano (Switzerland) , 2015, ENTER.

[4]  Victoria K. Wells.  Behavioural psychology, marketing and consumer behaviour: a literature review and future research agenda , 2014 .

[5]  P. Green,et al.  Conjoint Analysis in Consumer Research: Issues and Outlook , 1978 .

[6]  Keith Chrzan,et al.  Three kinds of order effects in choice-based conjoint analysis , 1994 .

[7]  Iis P. Tussyadiah,et al.  The Influence of Wi-Fi Service on Hotel Consumer Satisfaction , 2010 .

[8]  Breffni M. Noone,et al.  Effects of Price and User-Generated Content on Consumers’ Prepurchase Evaluations of Variably Priced Services , 2014 .

[9]  Alan R. Hevner,et al.  Design Science in Information Systems Research , 2004, MIS Q..

[10]  Sarah Tanford,et al.  Online Traveler Reviews as Social Influence: Price Is No Longer King , 2018 .

[11]  B. Sparks,et al.  The impact of online reviews on hotel booking intentions and perception of trust. , 2011 .

[12]  Santiago Melián-González,et al.  Improving hotel ratings by offering free Wi‐Fi , 2011 .

[13]  Dimitrios Buhalis,et al.  Technology as a Catalyst of Change: Enablers and Barriers of the Tourist Experience and Their Consequences , 2015, ENTER.

[14]  I. Vermeulen,et al.  Tried and tested: The impact of online hotel reviews on consumer consideration , 2009 .

[15]  Chiang ChunFang,et al.  The Effects of Perceived Price and Brand Image on Value and Purchase Intention: Leisure Travelers' Attitudes Toward Online Hotel Booking , 2007 .

[16]  Dick R. Wittink,et al.  Commercial use of conjoint analysis in Europe: Results and critical reflections , 1994 .

[17]  S. Jang,et al.  The Effects of Perceived Price and Brand Image on Value and Purchase Intention: Leisure Travelers' Attitudes Toward Online Hotel Booking , 2007 .

[18]  B. Roche,et al.  Relational frame theory : A post-Skinnerian account of human language and cognition , 2004 .

[19]  Xianggui Qu,et al.  Multivariate Data Analysis , 2007, Technometrics.

[20]  C. Muller.  Hospitality technology: a review and reflection , 2010 .

[21]  Paul E. Green,et al.  Conjoint Analysis in Marketing: New Developments with Implications for Research and Practice , 1990 .

[22]  A. Fagerstrøm,et al.  On Motivating Operations at the Point of Online Purchase Setting , 2013 .

[23]  Rob Law,et al.  Identifying emerging hotel preferences using Emerging Pattern Mining technique , 2015 .

[24]  C. Cobanoglu,et al.  The Impact of Wi-Fi Service in Restaurants on Customers' Likelihood of Return to a Restaurant , 2012 .

[25]  R. Barker.  Ecological Psychology: Concepts and Methods for Studying the Environment of Human Behavior , 1968 .

[26]  G. Foxall,et al.  The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility Activities on the Consumer Purchasing Situation , 2015 .

[27]  Colin Camerer,et al.  The Effects of Financial Incentives in Experiments: A Review and Capital-Labor-Production Framework , 1999 .

[28]  Rob Law,et al.  An analysis of online reviews on technology applications : a case of hotel ICON , 2014 .

[29]  M. Sturman,et al.  The Differential Effects of the Quality and Quantity of Online Reviews on Hotel Room Sales , 2014 .