Literature Review: E-commerce Performance in Hospitality and Tourism

This literature review, published in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, examines the performance of e-commerce within the hospitality and tourism industries. It synthesizes 155 recent articles to propose a framework for understanding e-commerce performance, identifying three key dimensions influenced by market and organizational e-commerce environments and their dynamic relationships. The study addresses the fragmented understanding of e-commerce performance by reviewing both mainstream and hospitality-specific literature. The methodology involves theoretical sampling and a snowballing technique to identify key sources and themes. The review highlights the evolution of e-commerce from proprietary systems to organization-facilitated social activities, emphasizing its impact on customer experience and business value. The study aims to provide insights for industry practitioners and suggest directions for future research, contributing to a more cohesive understanding of e-commerce performance.

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management
E-commerce performance in hospitality and tourism
Nan Hua,
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To cite this document:
Nan Hua, (2016) "E-commerce performance in hospitality and tourism", International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 28 Issue: 9, pp.2052-2079, https://doi.org/10.1108/
IJCHM-05-2015-0247
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E-commerce performance in
hospitality and tourism
Nan Hua
University of CentralFlorida, Orlando, Florida, USA
Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to examine the extant E-commerce performance literature to de
coherent framework to further the understanding, identify research gaps and suggest poten
study directions.
Design/methodology/approach – Based on theoretical sampling (Corbin and Strauss,2008),this
study followed Greenhalgh et al. (2009) for the paper sample collection and used explorator
before the snowballing technique to identify key sources to uncover the E-commerce perform
themes and prior findings systematically.
Findings – By reviewing and synthesizing 155 recent articles,this study proposed an integrated
framework of E-commerce performance to organize the complex literature parsimoniously. T
found thatE-commerce performance exhibits three key dimensions and is influenced by mark
E-commerce environment,organization E-commerce environment and the dynamic and interactiv
relationships in between.
Practical implications – The proposed framework offers industry practitioners opportunitie
understand determinants and be updated with current practices of E-commerce performancThe
findings of this study further point practitioners to directions that can lead to better E-comm
performance.
Originality/value – This study produced a cohesive framework of E-commerce performance
on an extensive review of the literature in both the mainstream and hospitality and tourism
addressing the issue ofthe currently fragmented understanding on E-commerce performance in
hospitality and tourism.
Keywords Tourism, Electronic commerce, Performance measurement, Hospitality industry,
Hospitality, E-commerce performance
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
Over the past two decades,the explosion of research interest related to E-commerc
performance has stimulated a substantial number of academic studies (Chae e
Hua etal.,2015;Law etal.,2014;Yang etal.,2015).Although these studies have
significantly enriched the body ofknowledge forE-commerce performance,new
challenges surface as the sheer work volume has become more or less an obst
knowledge development and the literature has still remained fragmented. In pa
an overarching framework thatcan provide guidance and structure to the swiftly
increasing body ofacademicliteratureis lacking.Therefore,the evolution of
E-commerce performance literature calls for a systematic integration and synth
existing knowledge to inform the next wave of academic endeavors in this field
An information technology (IT)– intensive environment(Hua etal.,2015)has
managed to come through and stay for the hospitality and tourism industry, re
of the well-recognized reluctance for hoteliers to adopt new technologies (Buha
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0959-6119.htm
IJCHM
28,9
2052
Received 21 May 2015
Revised 20 October 2015
3 February 2016
Accepted 12 February 2016
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management
Vol. 28 No. 9, 2016
pp. 2052-2079
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0959-6119
DOI 10.1108/IJCHM-05-2015-0247
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Law and Jogaratnam,2005)or the evolving harmony for business stakeholders to
welcome IT progressing with tourism hand in hand (Poon,1993;Sheldon,1997).
Business processes,such as business-to-business (B2B)and business-to-consumer
(B2C),are digitized (Beldona et al.,2012),and attentions have shifted from promotion
(1960s), product development and marketing research (1970s) and revenue managemen
(1980s) (Dev et al., 2010) to focus on internet- and IT-mediated business processes, such
as consumer-to-consumer (C2C) social activities (Morosan et al., 2014).
While IT has increasingly permeated the industry as supported by its own
advancementand accommodating business models (Law etal.,2014),a holistic
customer/client experience is a common goal most contemporary digital processes
are striving for (Nyheim and Connolly, 2012). In addition, these digital processes are
often characterized by usefulness, playfulness and ease of use (Morosan and Jeong,
2008).As a result, mobileand socialnetworking business-related technology
(Berkus,2013),for example,is gaining momentum overtraditionalpersonal
computers (Hua et al.,2015).Electronic commerce (E-commerce),therefore,can be
considered as a sophisticated IT process thatsupports achieving the holistic
customer/clientexperiencefrom aspectsof design,communication,delivery,
fulfillment and evaluation (Hua et al.,2015),with the underlying structural vehicle
evolving from computer reservation systems (1970s), to global distribution systems
(1980s),to internet(1990s)and to today’s organization-facilitated C2C virtual
network social activities (Buhalis, 2003; eBusiness W@tch, 2006; Emmer et al., 1993;
Morosan et al.,2014;O’Connor,1999).
While serving as the fundamentalmedia for mostcustomer-and client-related
activities in today’s markets, E-commerce carries a full commercial connotation because
such a process is essentially transactional(Hua etal.,2015).Its synergistic and
accelerating interaction with hospitality and tourism has brought fundamental changes
to the industry (Buhalis and Law, 2008) and cultivated competitiveness in the business
environment (UNWTO, 2001). Consequently, E-commerce performance is referred to as
the business value impact of E-commerce (Zhu and Kraemer, 2002) that includes three
types of benefits:
(1) marketing and competition benefits;
(2) essential benefits that support strategy and development; and
(3) business efficiency benefits (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013).
Considering the complexity,ubiquity and criticality of E-commerce among B2B,B2C
and organization-facilitated C2C settings in the tourism and hospitality industry (Hua
et al., 2015),this study offers a review of155 recentarticles published both in
mainstream E-commerce literature and the hospitality and tourism field.Focused on
E-commerce performance,this study aims to furtherour understanding,identify
research gaps and suggest potential future study directions.It should be noted that,
although studies in hospitality and tourism have approached E-commerce performance
from many distinct perspectives, we have only managed to understand the nature and
impacts of E-commerce in a scattered and fragmented fashion; an integration approach
is thus much needed. Therefore, this study also attempts to synthesize extant empirical
studies of E-commerce performance and offer a coherent and informative framework of
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E-commerceperformance,which should contributeto advancingknowledge
development and produce a significant long-term impact (Maclnnis, 2011).
2. Methodology
Because no study has systematically examined the topic of E-commerce perfor
the mainstream and hospitality and tourism field,conducting a comprehensive and
pertinentreview ofthe E-commerce performance literature requires the method o
theoreticalsampling (Corbin and Strauss,2008).In this case,articles related to
E-commerce performance are considered the sample,whose size is determined by the
point of “informational redundancy”. In other words, the article collection proce
stop when finding overlaps start to emerge from the articles repetitively and no
information is anticipated (Lincoln and Cuba, 1985, p. 202). Such a point would
that both information depth and breadth are achieved (Bowen, 2008), and a th
framework governing E-commerce performance would emerge. Specifically, th
followed the methodology by Greenhalgh et al.(2009) for the article sample collection
and used exploratory methods (browsing,asking colleagues) before the snowballing
technique (searching references of references and using citation-tracking data
such as EBSCOhost (Hung and Law,2011),ScienceDirect (Tsang and Hsu,2011) and
ProQuest Business (Tsai et al., 2011). to identify key sources to uncover the E-c
performance themes and prior findings systematically (Greenhalgh etal.,2009)–
Greenhalgh and Peacock (2005) show snowballing techniques are more efficien
both using formal search strategies to electronic databases and hand searchinThe
article collection process started with four of the latest articles related to E-com
performancepublished in premium academicjournals– Chae et al. (2014)in
Management Information Systems Quarterly (the impact factor for 2014: 5.311
impactfactor:8.490),Hua et al. (2015)in InternationalJournal of Hospitality
Management (the impact factor for 2014: 1.939; five-year impact factor: 2.519
(2014) in InternationalJournalof Contemporary Hospitality Management (the impact
factor for 2014: 1.407; five-year impact factor: 1.963) and Yang et al. (2015) in
Analysis and Strategic Management (the impact factor for 2014: 0.942; five-ye
factor: 1.49) – and stopped at 155 articles when thematic saturation and findin
became obvious and a theoreticalframework governing E-commerce performance
emerged.In addition,the following two criteria were applied to determine the 155
articles selected.First,only full-length research papers were included – this criterio
follows from the common belief that other scholarly works, such as research no
book reviews,tend to lack in originality and contribution to knowledge developme
(Law et al., 2012). Second, the research paper under consideration needed to b
E-commerce performance as defined by Abou-Shouk et al. (2013), Hua et al. (2
Zhu and Kraemer (2002).
The collected articles were then reviewed,organized,analyzed,synthesized and
evaluated to form clear and logical conclusions with regard to what is learned a
be learned (Denyer and Tranfield,2009).Specifically,abstracts of the selected articles
were first reviewed in a chronological order, which ensured deduction of idea e
trends over time (Mustak et al.,2013).Guided by abstract review insights,this study
then formed the article structuralscheme,following the framework established by
Abou-Shouk et al. (2013) – each article collected was categorized under the thr
E-commerce benefits:
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(1) “marketing and competition benefits”;
(2) “essential benefits that support strategy and development”; and
(3) “business efficiency benefits” (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013) for mainstream journals
and hospitality and tourism journals, respectively.
It is a common practice in the hospitality and tourism field to use “mainstream journals”
to referto generic discipline-specific journals,such as ManagementInformation
Systems Quarterly, and to use “hospitality or tourism journals” to refer to journals that
are contextualized in hospitality and tourism.This categorization further facilitates
research gap identification, article synthesis and theoretical framework construction.
3. E-commence performance background
A temporal pattern emerged while researchers were closely examining the relationships
between E-commerce and firm performance. E-commerce in the 1990s appeared to have
offered advantages to firms with resource slack, exhibiting characteristics of utilizing
proprietary systems (Wang,2010).For example,E-commerce facilitated by electronic
data interchange (EDI)created competitive advantages for those thatemployed it
(Mukhopadhyay et al.,1995).Santhanam and Hartono (2003)showed that EDI was
sustainableto a certain extentin a multi-industry context,suggesting firm IT
capabilitiescould improveperformance(Bharadwaj,2000).In addition,these
stand-aloneand proprietary systemsare often costly ordifficultfor firms to
communicate with their trading partners because of a lack in powerful communicating
platforms and constraints in data (Yang et al., 2015).
Facilitated by abundant IT support, significantly reduced costs and surging vendor
interests,E-commerce started to take center stage in the 2000s (Maslietal.,2011).
Particularly noteworthy was that the extensive standardization of IT tools (Wang, 2010)
and Web-based technologies, which offer two-way, real-time information exchange on
the value chain (Zhu 2004),offered opportunities for firms that were smaller and less
resourceful to compete with those that were bigger and more resourceful (Masli et al.,
2011).As a result,E-commerce induced large-scale transformations that were both
internaland externalto an organization,exerting profound influence on both the
organization and its relationship with stakeholders (Carr, 2003).
3.1 Marketing and competition benefits of E-commerce
From a resource-based view (RBV),E-commerce capabilities can lead to performance
advantages(Nevo and Wade,2010),such as differentiation orcost advantages
(Bharadwaj,2000)because unique organizationalcapabilities can be derived from
proper resources utilization and allocation within a firm (Chae et al., 2014) with support
from other resources such as productive organization cultures (Bharadwaj,2000).
However, firm capabilities are dynamic and continuously evolving to “adapt to rapidly
changing environments” (Elsenhardt and Martin,2000;Teece et al.,1997),which led
researchers to a dynamic capabilities perspective (DCP) to understand how a firm gains
competitive advantages in today’s dynamic marketplaces (Chae et al.,2014).Superior
performance can result from a firm’s strong E-commerce orientation because such a firm
can be more agile to adapt to dynamic business environments (Sambamurthy et al.,
2003). However, this stream of research has built in an assumption that E-commerce will
bring the expected benefits and lead to competitive advantages, which appear at odds
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with the inconclusive results from recentempiricalstudies aboutthe performance
impact of E-commerce (Chae et al., 2014) – not all E-commerce endeavors mat
resources that are “rare,inimitable,non-substitutable,and valuable” (RINV) and thus
create competitive edges and command economic rent(Barney,1992;Amit and
Schoemaker,1993).Consequently,skepticism startedto arise as to whether
internet-based electronic businesses will continue to benefit from the economic
IT (Tallon and Kraemer, 2007; Zhu and Kraemer, 2002), and more general appr
are called for to better understand potentialbenefits of E-commerce in the business
setting (Chathoth, 2007).
Several benefits of E-commerce that facilitate gaining a marketing and comp
edge,however,have been documented.For example,E-commerce can ensure a stable
survival in the ever-changing and competitive business environment (Stansfiel
Grant,2003).In particular,E-commerce can improve competitiveness ofsmalland
medium enterprises (SMEs) because it can enable efficient collaboration (Kvain
et al., 2005).It is widely recognized thatE-commerce,which leads to improved
organization imageand reputation ofSMEs in the globalmarket(Ayeh,2006;
Beckinsale and Levy,2004;Collins etal.,2003;Kajogbola,2004;Scarborough and
Zimmerer,2003)and technology diffusion resultin SMEs’ improved competitive
positions (Beatty et al.,2001;Daniel and Wilson,2002;Kartiwi and MacGregor,2007;
MacGregor, 2004).
Moreover,E-commerce can improve productivity and realize economies of sca
leading to betteroperating efficiency and performance (Beekhuyzen etal., 2005;
Harindranath et al.,2008;Migiro and Ocholla,2005;Simpson and Docherty,2004).By
shortening response times to enquiries and by tracking and improving custome
satisfaction,E-commerce can lead to more repeat businesses and enhanced cust
loyalty (Dyerson and Harindranath,2007;Quayle,2002;Saffu and Walker,2008;Teo
et al., 2009). An “e-competitive transformation” (Straub and Klein, 2001), if ap
used,can gain firms competitive advantage over both online and offline compet
(Dyerson and Harindranath, 2007; Harindranath et al., 2008; Poon and Joseph,
3.2 Essential benefits of E-commerce that support strategy and development
From a strategic and development perspective, turning investment in E-comme
firm capabilitiesthat can generatesustainablecompetitiveadvantagesand
outperformance is playing an increasingly critical role for business organizationOn
the one hand, physical IT assets such as equipment and even some software a
easily imitable and thus tend to bring only temporary outperformance (Teece e
1997).On the other hand,the intangible IT assets and capabilities,once successfully
integrated in a business, can bring sustainable superior performance (Christen
Overdorf, 2000) because they are considered RINV resources, characterized by
idiosyncrasy and often a long development time window (Dierickx and Cool, 19
shielded by factors like social embeddedness and causal ambiguity from comp
imitation (Dierickx and Cool, 1989).
Therefore,studies in the business literature predominantly focus on adoption a
related issues (Wang et al.,2013).Particular attention was directed to strategic and
developmentimplicationsthat follow from E-commerceadoption.For example,
E-commerce adoption was shown to improve financialgrowth at both the top and
bottom lines of organizations (Karagozoglu and Lindell, 2004; Straub and Klein
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and enhance a firm’s capability to penetrate internationalmarkets through easy
information access on a global scale (Jin, 2007; MacGregor, 2004; Zheng et al., 2004). By
improving communications with customers, E-commerce strengthens firms’ capability
of service customization (Pease and Rowe,2005).By improving communications with
customers,suppliersand partners(Azam,2007;Karanasios,2008;Simpson and
Docherty, 2004) and efficient use of technology to serve customers, E-commerce leads to
customer satisfaction and loyalty (APEC, 1999), further advancing effective relationship
building. In addition,becauseE-commercetechnologyprovidessupport to
organizationswith increased and easieraccessto information and knowledge,
E-commerceadoptioncan lead to improvingdecision-makingprocessesand
management productivity (APEC,1999),as wellas better systems,frameworks and
methodologies, to make strategic and functional decisions (Grandon and Pearson, 2004;
Kajogbola, 2004).
In general,IT infrastructure and other physicalIT assets,such as internet and
associated technologies,do notcreate value withoutbeing integrated with other
organizational resources (Mata et al., 1995), which are often difficult or costly to transfer
when combined (Amitand Schoemaker,1993).Only by complementing tangible
technology assets, intangible IT assets such as human and business IT resources appear
to explain performance variances among companies (Siqueira and Fleury, 2011; Li et al.,
2014).Owning IT resources that best complement technology in attaining innovation
appears to be the most powerfulway to create and secure sustainable competitive
advantagesagainstcompetition imitation (Feeny and Willcocks,1998).In the
E-commerce context, firms do not have the same E-commerce capabilities; even if they
do, they can benefitonly from Web-based technologies thatare integrated into
organizations and produce “sustainable resource complementarity” (Lederer et al., 2001;
Straub and Klein, 2001; Zhu, 2004).
3.3 Business efficiency benefits of E-commerce
Successful interaction between E-commerce and four intangible assets, i.e. “alignment of
E-commerce with business strategy, financial resources, user involvement, and external
relationship management” (Bharadwaj, 2000; Thong, 2001; Sauer and Willcocks, 2002;
Bruneel et al.,2012;Li et al.,2014;Yang et al.,2015),could result in outperformance
(Yang etal.,2015)because ofincreased business efficiency (Bharadwaj,2000)and
barriers to imitation (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993).
Therefore, E-commerce can lead to operations and internal efficiency improvements
(Collins et al., 2003; Dyerson and Harindranath, 2007; Karanasios, 2008; Kuan and Chau,
2001; Teo et al., 2009), which result in better business performance (Jin, 2007; Poon and
Joseph, 2001) and improved supply chain efficiency (Quayle, 2002). A number of reasons
have been explored to understand business efficiency benefits ofE-commerce.For
example, adopting E-commerce technology was cited to improve internal efficiency by
enabling better order processing,employment growth,inventory control,online staff
recruitment,accountability and staff satisfaction (Dyerson and Harindranath,2007;
Harindranath et al.,2008;Kajogbola,2004;Quayle,2002),in addition to supporting
improved cooperative efficiency of supply chain management (Daniel and Wilson, 2002;
MacGregor, 2004; Saffu and Walker, 2008). In particular, E-commerce is recognized for
facilitating collaboration and planning among supply chain partners (Quayle,2002).
Additional benefits of creating E-commerce technology capabilities include business
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knowledge enhancement (APEC, 1999; The e-Regions Trust, 2006), internal kno
sharing improvement(Danieland Wilson,2002)and online transaction execution
enhancement (Álvarez et al.,2009;Raymond,2001),which includes both processes of
order taking and tracking (Ayeh, 2006; Wesrthner and Klein, 1999).
In short, E-commerce can be a resource that generates competitive value on
combined with tacit,specific business resources and skills (Yang et al.,2015).The
literatureof its performance,as illustrated above,can be categorized intoa
production-economics-basedstream anda process-orientedstream (Baruaand
Mukhopadhyay, 2000) – production functions are used in the first stream of res
explore the input– output relationships driven by IT, and, in general, positive em
evidence was found between IT and productivity (Chan,2000);performance analyses
are conducted in the second stream of research to examine the effects of inves
intermediate operational performance, as well as financial performance at a hi
(Barua and Mukhopadhyay, 2000).
4. E-commerce performance in hospitality and tourism
E-commerce evolved uniquely in the hospitality and tourism industry over time
(Gaffney,2013).Early E-commercepracticesstarted in the1960s,when the
hospitality and tourism industry began to rely on globaldistribution systems
(Thakran and Verma,2013).In particular,the programs of frequent flyers in the
1980s provided airlines with detailed customer information (Kim et al., 2009) a
to successful customer relations management and relationship marketing, sett
foundation for modern E-commerce (Chen et al., 2002). While the internet eme
in the 1990s took E-commerce to a new level, where B2B and B2C relationship
more interactive (Kim et al.,2009),the year of 2000 observed E-commerce stepping
into the SoLoMo era,where social,location and mobile played dominating roles
(Thakran and Verma,2013).Starting from 2012 and featuring extensive consumer
behavior intermixing across purchase,channeland device alternatives (Thakran
and Verma,2013),the hybrid era witnessed rapid evolvement of E-commerce into
the mobile commerce domain (Gaffney,2013)and offered great opportunities of
research to complementprior studies thataddressed technology progress and
marketing evolution (Berkus,2013;Dev et al.,2010).For example,the majority of
hotel guests tend to bring at least two devices with them and consider paramo
the freedom to use their own devices and controltheir entertainment(Watkins,
2013).Some cruise lines and upscale hotels,such as Oceania and Kimpton,have
started to make iPads available for guest use and convenience (Hua et al.,2015).
4.1 Marketing and competition benefits of E-commerce
The resource-based view (Chae et al.,2014;Nevo and Wade,2010) and the theory of
dynamic capabilities (Elsenhardt and Martin,2000;Teece et al.,1997) appear to have
served as theoretical foundations for studies related to E-commerce performan
hospitality industry. Relationships describing E-commerce and hotel performan
proposed (Chathoth, 2007); IT-mediated tasks and performance measures wer
but, similar to studies in the mainstream, were found to have inconclusive resu
instance,failed to exhibit a direct influence on company performance;however,firm
capabilities that take full advantage of informalization and networking lead to i
performance (Sigala,2003).When mediated by employee outcomes,E-commerce that
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supports customer service was found to influence hotel performance (Cohen and Olsen,
2013). Recently, Hua et al. (2015) found that E-commerce expenses in general influence
rooms’revenue positively and significantly,although such expenses appear to have
distinct impacts across different chain scale types.
The theory of dynamic capabilities suggests that E-commerce can be considered as a
dynamic capability (Hua et al.,2015).Utilizing knowledge,routines,simple rules and
analytic processes to create customer value,organizations exhibit characteristics of
dynamic capabilities, as they use appropriate E-commerce support to keep improving
their resource allocation and performance (Wheeler, 2002). Early examples can be found
in the tourism and hospitality industry in the 1960s when American Airlines developed
SABRE, a basic butautomated E-commerce system,to improve data processing
efficiency of traveler bookings and data.SABRE grew quickly to serve over 10,000
travelagents allover the world and later on became the biggest private real-time
data-processingsystem at one time. SABRE Technology Group introduced
Travelocity.com in 1996 and created a new market featuring optimization of consumer
and inventory interaction and aggregation such as search and customization, changing
the landscape of E-commerce (Mamaghani, 2009). The current shift in guests’ increasing
use ofmobile devices (Gaffney,2013)also highlights some areas where dynamic
capabilities can be carefully developed in the mobile dimension, such as trip planning,
real-time information accessing, information sharing and problem solving (Wang et al.,
2012). Geo-based technology can significantly create differentiating features by offering
timely geographical information and associated services (Tussyadiah and Zach, 2012).
While technology advancement has brought into being virtual reality (VR), VR appears
unlikely to replace a real visit in the near future (Guttentag, 2010).
Understanding how people seek,process and use travel information in both online
and offline contexts can provide managers with benchmarking information to improve
effectivenessof onlinemarketing strategies(Ho et al., 2012),particularly given
responses toward Web advertising were shown to positively impact website attitude,
which leads to improved attitudes about brands, and in turn to increased intentions to
purchase (Hwang etal.,2011).For example,Xiang and Gretzel(2010)studied the
appearance frequency of socialmedia websites in travel-related information search
results,considering that social media is a critical source of travel information.They
found that a large proportion of search results on travel information came from social
media websites and that search engines have become increasingly sensitive to social
media content. Later on, Hays et al. (2013) showed that social media can function as a
marketing tool for destinations. In addition, given that online marketing effectiveness
positively influences tourism dominance (Woodside et al., 2011), websites play a critical
role in promoting destination image (Jeong et al.,2012).Furthermore,because both
internal and external factors are essential in determining use of electronic marketing
(El-Gohary, 2012), different approaches should be used to target potential customers to
improve marketing effectiveness in an online environment (Luna-Nevarez and Hyman,
2012) to improve E-commerce performance.
Online travel communities hosted by business organizations also appear to behave
as effective marketing platforms,as consumers’intention to participate in such
communities was found to positively impact their intention to use and recommend
products of the host business organizations (Casaló et al., 2010). Consumers were found
to accept online purchasing, and perceived website control was shown to be positively
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related to purchase intention (Liang and Lim,2011).In addition,online purchasing
intention appears to be positively related to user innovativeness and ease of tr
process (San Martín and Herrero, 2012). Interestingly, taking souvenirs’ purcha
an example, it may be a good idea to complete a transaction the traditional wa
store before disclosing available online purchasing options,as purchase limitation
appears to increase initial purchase intent regardless of item type (Abendroth,2011).
Along the line of consumers’ repeat purchase and loyalty in online contexts, Ki
(2013a,2013b,2013c) showed that navigation functionality,transaction security and
cost effectiveness significantly influence trust, which then positively affect inte
repurchaseonline;Llach et al. (2013)offered empiricalevidencethat quality,
decomposed into the functionaland hedonic quality,positively and significantly
influences loyalty through perceived value in an online purchasing context of t
industry.And more experience using E-commerce tools appears to positively aff
repurchase intention (Oh et al., 2009). Therefore, it appears that E-commerce platfo
that are user friendly, functional, easy and fun to use and safe can significantly
E-commerce performance.In particular,proper E-commerce decisions can result in
competitive advantages (Bilgihan et al., 2011).
4.2 Essential benefits of E-commerce that support strategy and development
Tracing a similar line of evolvement, hospitality and tourism studies on E-comm
predominantly IT adoption-oriented (Wang et al.,2013).Yet,academic attention has
been broadened to address institutional employment of IT (Herrero and San Ma
2012; Kim et al., 2008, 2009), while keeping pace with the increasing number o
applications of E-commerce (Law et al., 2014).
IT adoption studies are criticalin understanding how to improve E-commerce
performance,as they pinpoint areas of interest that tend to have significant strate
implications and produce timely and practical improvements for business deve
For example,strengthening market position by maintaining good relationships wi
current business partners and securing new ones is a widely recognized E-com
benefit (Kim, 2006). E-commerce has been shown to help SMEs in the tourism ind
with collecting and distributing information on a globalscale;by offering easy
information access to tourism services and products,E-commerce was shown to
improve stakeholder relations (Bourgouin,2002;Kim, 2006).Socialmedia is often
considered as a critical source of information by international tourists to seek s
for a variety of problems (Schroeder et al. 2013). And guest-empowerment tec
appear to be valuable for hotel room services, as shown by Schrier et al. (2010
guests consider on-demand services the most attractive features.
In particular,understandingthe determinantsof IT adoption facilitates
organizations to optimize their choice of IT systems (Tarcan and Varol, 2010), which, in
turn,could lead to improved E-commerce performance.For instance,tourists who are
more familiar with the internet and exhibit high innovativeness tend to use pod
tours in museums for an enhanced experience (Kang and Gretzel, 2012). Consumers in
restaurants are prepared to use biometric systems when they are perceived as
secure (Morosan,2011).Potentialhotelguests tend to use mobile hotelreservation
services if they offer high information and system quality (Wang and Wang,2010).
Because customers rely on E-commerce platforms to facilitate their decision-m
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process (Law et al., 2014), websites focus on the needs of customers instead of those of
investors (Escobar-Rodríguez and Carvajal-Trujillo, 2013).
Severalstudies tried to understand customer needs in an attempt to improve
E-commerce performance from an online textual content perspective and started to
explore potentials oftext mining in the tourism and hospitality industry.For
example,positive online reviews (eWOM)were found to significantly improve
booking intention and trust (Sparks and Browning, 2011), intention to travel, tourist
attitude and destination image (Jalilvand etal., 2012).A selection ofkeywords
appears to dominate destination image because tourists rely on these words as
anchors to find more destination information online (Pan and Li, 2011). In addition,
travel blogs were shown to convey information about bloggers’ travel expectations,
values and beliefs (Banyaiand Havitz,2013).Therefore,managers can analyze
online textural information to understand tourists’ thoughts and work closely with
identified online ambassadors (Rong etal., 2009)to form effective marketing
strategies. It was also shown that a price-network size schedule featuring reducing
price with increasing network size could work to attract potential customers to make
timely purchases (Xiong and Hu,2010).
Studies addressing the relationship between tourism suppliers and intermediaries
are gaining momentum in the literature.For example,the loyalty ofan airline’s
consumers and competition of its own business website with online travel agency (OTA)
platforms appear to determine whether the airline uses OTA platforms to sell tickets
(Koo et al.,2011).Online wholesalers are perceived in some regions of the USA as
partners of hotel operators, with acknowledged benefits including global distribution of
products and services and aggressive media advertising that increase hotel visibility
and exposure (Myung et al.,2009).And online communication was found to improve
onlinereservation and e-ticketprocurement(Andreu etal., 2010).E-commerce
technology applications were also found to be criticalin increasing loyalty and
satisfaction of customers when supplier and travel agencies are concerned (Ruiz-Molina
et al., 2010) and leading to improved organization image and reputation of SMEs in the
global market (Liao and Par, 2006). Note, though, that the distribution channel structure
is affected by the marketstructure during the process ofrestructuring caused by
E-commerce technologies (Berne et al., 2012). Of particular importance is that IT steering
committees in hotels appear to exert a significant and positive impact on IT integration
(Cobanoglu etal., 2013).In conjunction with thelargenumberof benefitsthat
E-commerce can bring (Abou-Shouk etal.,2013),the committee is thus considered
strategically critical to hotel business success because of its influence in achieving IT
strategic goals and gaining a competitive edge over competition (Cobanoglu et al., 2013)
while,a recentstudy examined impacts ofE-commerce benefits on E-commerce
adoption (Abou-Shouk et al.,2013),instead of focusing on E-commerce benefits as a
result of E-commerce adoption (Bigné-Alcañiz et al., 2009). Moreover, studies started to
look at how hotels assess E-commerce technology investment, and preliminary results
suggest that centrally managed hotels often utilize more assessment tools based on both
financialand nonfinancialinformation,such as netpresentvalue and technical
requirementfit, than do locally managed hotels (Karadag etal.,2009).In short,
E-commerce has started to play an increasingly more important and strategic role in
operating and strategic management (Law et al., 2014).
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4.3 Business efficiency benefits of E-commerce
Business efficiency benefits derived from E-commerce can usually be classified
external and internal benefits. For example, transaction cost reduction was pro
a potentialinternalbenefitfrom using E-commerce technology in a hotelservice
operation context – the internal benefit of transaction cost reduction was found
positive,yet statistically insignificant,suggesting resource lack in implementing
E-commercein the hotelindustry (Chathoth and Law,2011).Using biometric
technologies in the hospitality and tourism industry was found to offer potentia
external benefits such as consumer convenience and increase operating efficie
security which are generally considered internal to a company (Mills et al., 201
concern, though, is how to securely protect consumers’ biometric data because
criticalprivate information (Mills etal.,2010).Community preferences can also be
influenced by E-commerce technologies such as an audience response system
tourism development(Keske and Smutko,2010).By facilitating collaboration and
planning among partners of supply chains (Quayle,2002),E-commerce was shown to
lead to better performance for travel agencies (Heung,2003).For SMEs,E-commerce
technology applications could lead to improved distribution channels and redu
operation costs (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013)
Overall, E-commerce appears instrumental in increasing productivity and op
efficiency,which in turn leads to the benefitof economies ofscale (Buhalis,2003;
Karanasios and Burgess,2008).Furthermore,indirectly,marketing benefits derived
from E-commerce appear to also bring crucial benefits of operational efficiency
increase and/or cost reduction (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013).
5. Discussions and research gaps of e-commerce performance in
hospitality and tourism
E-commerceis taking an increasingly moreimportantrole in serving as the
fundamentalplatform forall business transactions and non-business interactions
between all parties of interests – it provides critical support to all three domain
organization:
(1) the organization’s external market environment;
(2) the organization’s internal optimal performance; and
(3) flows between the organization and its market environment.
Understanding the key influencers of the performance of this fundamental plat
its core dimensions, therefore, is critical for modern business survival and succ
Based on the findings of this study, the E-commerce performance framework
derived as follows in Figure 1.The key dimensions and influencers of E-commerce
performanceare identified and relationshipsdepicted.Specifically,E-commerce
performancewas found to exhibit three key dimensionsthat encompass
competitiveness and marketing,strategic developmentand efficiency (Abou-Shouk
et al., 2013).It appearsthat E-commerceperformanceis influenced by market
E-commerce environment, organization E-commerce environment and the dyn
interactive relationships in between (Cohen and Olsen, 2013; Ho et al., 2012; H
2015; Law et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2013).
The market E-commerce environment,primarily the E-commerce infrastructure and
superstructureexternalto an organization thatdefine,supportand communicate
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