Kevin Kam Fung So

Customer Engagement With Tourism Brands: Scale Development and Validation

Although customer engagement (CE) has emerged as a widely used term in many industries, including tourism and hospitality, academic research lacks a clear conceptualization and rigorous measurement of the construct. This study develops and validates a 25-item CE scale that comprises five factors: identification, enthusiasm, attention, absorption, and interaction. The scale, developed from a survey of hotel and airline customers, demonstrated strong psychometric properties across multiple samples and showed CE to exert a positive significant influence on behavioral intention of loyalty for both hotel and airline customers. The scale offers a framework for future empirical research in this increasingly important area, and it provides a useful tool for tourism practitioners to collect insights into customer psychological and behavioral connections with their brands beyond the service consumption experience.

When experience matters: Building and measuring hotel brand equity - The customers' perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide hotel brand managers with a robust measure to evaluate brand equity as an outcome of brand strategies, as well as to gain insight into what contributes to hotel brand equity.Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative methodology was adopted including the development of a survey questionnaire that allows for the measurement of the six constructs contained within Berrys service‐branding model. The development of the survey instrument followed a two‐stage process. In the initial stage, pretested items were generated from the research literature. The second stage involved conducting focus groups to identify and eliminate deficiencies of the questionnaire. Data were collected using a self‐administered survey via central location intercept across multiple tourist attractions in a major tourist destination in Australia. The sample of the present study consisted of 288 respondents who have previously stayed in a hotel organisation.Findings – Using Berrys servi...

The Role of Customer Engagement in Building Consumer Loyalty to Tourism Brands

Customer engagement has recently emerged in both academic literature and practitioner discussions as a brand loyalty predictor that may be superior to other traditional loyalty antecedents. However, empirical inquiry on customer engagement is relatively scarce. As tourism and hospitality firms have widely adopted customer engagement strategies for managing customer–brand relationships, further understanding of this concept is essential. Using structural equation modeling, this study investigates the linkages of customer engagement with traditional antecedents of brand loyalty. Results based on 496 hotel and airline customers suggest that customer engagement enhances customers’ service brand evaluation, brand trust, and brand loyalty. The results show that service brand loyalty can be strengthened not only through the service consumption experience but also through customer engagement beyond the service encounter. This study contributes to the literature by providing an empirical evaluation of the relationships between customer engagement and key brand loyalty development factors.

Residents’ Support for Tourism Testing Alternative Structural Models

Social exchange theory (SET) has made significant contributions to research on residents’ support for tourism. Nevertheless, studies are based on an incomplete set of variables and are characterized by alternative, yet contradictory, and theoretically sound research propositions. Using key constructs of SET, this study develops a baseline model of residents’ support and compares it with four competing models. Each model contains the terms of the baseline model and additional relationships reflecting alternative theoretical possibilities. The models were tested using data collected from residents of Niagara Region, Canada. Results indicated that in the best fitted model, residents’ support for tourism was influenced by their perceptions of positive impacts. Residents’ power and their trust in government significantly predicted their life satisfaction and their perceptions of positive impacts. Personal benefits from tourism significantly influenced residents’ perceptions of the positive and negative impacts of tourism. The study provides valuable and clearer insights on relationships among SET variables.

Enhancing customer relationships with retail service brands: The role of customer engagement

Purpose – The concept of customer engagement (CE) has emerged as an important indicator of customer-brand relationship strength. However, limited research exists to provide insight into how CE enhances the effectiveness of building such a relationship in retail services. The purpose of this paper is to extend the current understanding of CE through examination of its role in the development of customer-brand relationship quality. Design/methodology/approach – To test the hypotheses contained in the proposed conceptual model, the authors used a quantitative method that included a survey questionnaire to measure customers’ perceptions with respect to the constructs of interest. Specifically, two studies were conducted in Australia. Study 1 was intended to empirically test the theoretical relationships among the constructs, while Study 2 aimed to replicate the proposed model with a different sample to enhance external validity. Findings – In two separate studies, the results of a structural model show that t...

Technology Readiness and Customer Satisfaction with Travel Technologies: A Cross-Country Investigation

Technologies have dramatically transformed tourist experience. However, research has largely focused on traveler attitudes and technology adoption rather than their experience with travel technologies. Taking a cross-country perspective, this study examines the role of technology readiness (TR) as a personality trait in shaping travelers’ satisfaction with travel technologies, using airlines as a case study. Results of an online survey of travelers in Australia, China, and the United States revealed the moderating effects of the TR dimensions of optimism and innovativeness as well as country of residence on the relationships between perceived quality of technology-enabled services (TESs), satisfaction with TESs, overall satisfaction, and future behavior. These relationships were stronger among travelers with higher TR and varied across countries. The results suggest that tourism and hospitality service providers should incorporate measures of traveler TR and TESs’ performance into their customer-experience monitoring system.

Inside the sharing economy: Understanding consumer motivations behind the adoption of mobile applications

Purpose This paper aims to investigate what motivates consumers to adopt one of the emerging mobile applications of the sharing economy, ridesharing application. Using social cognitive theory as the theoretical framework, this study develops a value adoption model to illustrate important factors that influence adoption of ridesharing applications. Design/methodology/approach Based on prior literature, a quantitative methodology was adopted using a survey questionnaire that allows for the measurement of the nine constructs contained in the hypothesized theoretical model. Data collected from a sample of 314 respondents in Beijing, China provided the foundation for the examination of the proposed relationships in the model. Findings First, the results indicate that self-efficacy is a fundamental factor that has a direct effect on consumers’ perceptions of value and an indirect effect on behavioral intentions. Second, the study demonstrates that functional value, emotional value and social value are critical antecedents of overall perceived value of ridesharing applications. On the other hand, learning effort and risk perception are not significant perceived costs for consumers in adopting ridesharing applications. Research limitations/implications Although typical adopters of internet applications constitute a significant portion of younger consumers, the use of a college student sample in this study may affect the generalizability of the results. Practical implications The findings provide critical insight into consumer motivations behind adoption of ridesharing applications specifically, and for sharing economy platforms in general. Originality/value This study provides important theoretical implications for innovation adoption research through an empirical examination of the relationship between personal, environmental and behavioral factors in a framework of social cognitive theory.

Enhancing Hotel Employees' Brand Understanding and Brand-Building Behavior in China

To participate effectively in the present Chinese hotel market, multinational companies must achieve a competitive advantage, which they attain by building the brand. This study promotes employee brand understanding as a precursor to positive brand-building behavior. Results indicate that internally oriented brand activities, especially brand-oriented recruitment, brand-oriented training, and brand-oriented support, exert a significant influence on employees’ brand understanding, leading to subsequent exhibition of pro-brand behavior. In developing brand understanding, hotels must take into account the potentially limited knowledge of mainland Chinese employees regarding global hotel brands. The findings suggest that Chinese hotel employees’ understanding of multinational hotel groups’ brand is critical to successful brand-building behavior.

What Technology-Enabled Services Do Air Travelers Value? Investigating the Role of Technology Readiness

An increasing use of technology in service delivery presents challenges for businesses, in particular in relation to how customers perceive specific technology-enabled services (TESs) and which TESs they embrace. This study investigates the influence of technology readiness (TR) on travelers’ perceived importance of various airline TESs. Results reveal three categories of TESs: Established, Network Access, and New. Two dimensions of TR—Optimism and Innovativeness—were significantly associated with the perceived importance of TESs. Respondents who reported higher levels of Optimism rated Established TESs as particularly important. In contrast, respondents high on Innovativeness rated Network Access and New TESs as more important. The association between TR dimensions and perceived importance of TESs was more evident in customers of low-cost carriers than in customers of full-service airlines. This study contributes to the TES and TR literature by explaining why a TES may be more (or less) important to different customers through the association of the TR construct.

The Impacts of Self-Esteem and Resilience on Academic Performance: An Investigation of Domestic and International Hospitality and Tourism Undergraduate Students

The rise in student demand for international education has presented many challenges to tourism and hospitality educators and institutions, as well as students. A critical concern for 1st-year undergraduates, and for international students in particular, lies in academic adjustment issues, which may be related to student self-esteem and resilience and may ultimately affect academic performance. Although investigators have made many attempts to discern the problems students face when studying in English as a second language, very little is known about the influence of self-esteem and resilience on academic performance, particularly that of tourism and hospitality students. This research explores the impacts of self-esteem and resilience factors on the academic performance of international students compared to domestic Australian students. The results suggest that for both groups, self-esteem and resilience are significant predictors of academic performance. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for teacher–student interaction are discussed.