TOURISM - An International Interdisciplinary Journal
Volume 54 / 2006 / Number 4 ISSN 1332-7461
Evangelos CHRISTOU
A qualitative analysis of consumer attitudes on adoption of online travel services
Abstract:
The study reported in this paper explores consumers' experiences with technology-assisted service encounters by investigating the applicability of Mick and Fournier's paradoxes of techno-logy adoption to the online travel agents' services scenario. In-depth interviews were conducted to explore consumers' experiences when using travel agents' online services and the results were compared to those of Mick and Fournier. The findings are similar, suggesting that when consu-mers adopt online technology they can simultaneously develop positive and negative attitudes. The findings of this study also suggest that the nature of some of the paradoxes experienced by consumers may depend on the industry (travel industry in this study) and the technology (the Internet in this study) being investigated; consumers can develop multiple attitudes towards certain source elements, resulting in existence of contradictory views and attitudes. In terms of Mick and Fournier's paradoxes, the findings of this study indicate that when consumers use technology assisted service encounters for travel agents' services they are most likely to experi-ence control/chaos, freedom/enslavement, competence/incompetence, efficiency/ inefficiency, engaging/disengaging, assimilation/isolation paradoxes and least likely to experience the new/obsolete paradox.
Keywords:
adoption of technological innovations online travel agents online travel services consumer attitudes Greece
Articles in this issue:
- Factors influencing healthy meal choice in Germany (315-322)
- A qualitative analysis of consumer attitudes on adoption of online travel services (323-331)
- e-Customer Relationship Management in the hotel sector: Guests' perceptions of perceived e-service quality levels (333-344)
- Tracking student satisfaction in an uncertain tourism education market (345-353)
- Cross cultural change, adjustment and culture shock: UK to USA (355-365)
- Hospitality student learning styles: The impact of gender and nationality (367-374)
- An exploratory study of outsourcing of foodservice operations in Canadian hotels (375-383)
- Middle-up-down and top-down approaches: Strategy implemen-tation, uncertainty, structure, and foodservice segment (385-395)
- From instability to volatility: Bermuda's shift from tourism to international business dependency (397-403)
- GIS applications as a tool for tourism planning and education: A case study of Chalkidiki (405-413)