Lina Xiong

Where is the love?: Investigating multiple membership and hotel customer loyalty

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore polygamous program loyalty in hotel loyalty programs and the relationship between members’ behavioral loyalty and their perceptions of the program effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach – Descriptive statistics, discriminant analysis, ordinary least square regression and one-way ANOVA methods. Findings – This study suggests that the flexibility to purchase points in a loyalty program is significantly associated with the polygamous program loyalty. Members will stay in only one program if they perceive such flexibility. Although members tend to emphasize purchasing accommodation from the loyalty programs’ hotels, they do not necessarily advocate or pay price premiums for the brand. Compared with basic members, elite members exhibit higher levels of loyalty behaviors in general, but not in terms of paying price premiums. Research limitations/implications – The results suggest that how customers value a loyalty program can differentiate the number of memb...

The importance of employee brand understanding, brand identification, and brand commitment in realizing brand citizenship behaviour

Purpose This study aims to develop comprehensive definitions, conceptualizations and measures of four internal brand management (IBM) outcomes, namely, brand understanding, brand identification, brand commitment and brand citizenship behaviour (BCB). In doing so, it also aims to propose a model, which considers the relationships across these outcomes. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected via an online survey of 375 employees who work in service organizations, sourced from an Australian, Web-based market research list. Findings In addition to the indirect effect of brand understanding on BCB via affective IBM outcomes (i.e. brand identification and brand commitment), the study exposes a direct effect of brand understanding on BCB. Therefore, the study shows that BCB is affected by cognitive and affective antecedents. Research limitations/implications Because this study focuses on IBM outcomes, future studies could propose and test relevant antecedents and moderators. As the empirical basis of this study comes primarily from the tourism and hospitality industry in one domestic market, the study should be replicated in other industries and countries to ensure the generalizability of the identified relationships. Practical implications This study not only delivers IBM outcome measures but also empirically validates that employees’ understanding of the brand is a foundation for affective and behavioural IBM outcomes. Therefore, managers, especially in service organizations, should provide sufficient IBM practices to enable such brand understanding. Originality/value This study contributes to IBM literature by developing comprehensive definitions, conceptualizations and measures of four important IBM outcomes. This study is the first to include brand understanding, brand identification, brand commitment and BCB simultaneously.

Understanding Active Loyalty Behavior in Hotel Reward Programs Through Customers’ Switching Costs and Perceived Program Value

ABSTRACT Whether loyalty programs have become part of the lexicon of buzzwords or not, the hotel industry continues to adopt loyalty/rewards programs as a major channel to nurture customers’ active loyalty as well as to reap return business. This study examins the structural relationships among perceived program value, switching costs, and active loyalty. The proposed model is supported by an online survey dataset collected from United States (US) tourists. The findings show that perceived program value is less effective in driving active loyalty compared with switching costs. This implies a need for strategic thinking on the part of hoteliers and the industry. Rather than aggressively spending money or copying schemes used by competitors to gear up program value, the value of a defensive tactic of increasing switching costs should be considered.

Harness the Power of Viral Marketing in Hotel Industry: A Network Discount Strategy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on the pricing strategy for viral marketing in the context of the hotel industry and propose three typical price‐network size schedules to be tested. The paper further proposes controlled experiments in hotel industry context to examine the performance of those schedules.Design/methodology/approach – A simulated hotel booking web site with basic reservation functions will be constructed. Participants should be randomly drawn and asked to encourage their friends from social networks to book with the participant to achieve a better price. Each participant will be given a special promotion code embedded with different pricing information. The number of customers attracted, total revenue and time to achieve a sell‐out was collected after the experiments.Findings – These were the expected performance differences associated with different network pricing strategies in the viral marketing campaigns.Research limitations/implications – Since participants do not need ...

Examining the Role of Employee-Brand Value Congruence in Internal Brand Management

Given the influential role brands play in shaping customers’ perceptions of service quality, many service companies leverage the power of brands to develop a competitive advantage (Berry 2000). However, to achieve brand success, service organizations need to ensure that the actual brand experience, as reflected through employees’ attitudes and behaviors, are consistent with the brand promise that are set through external branding practices. Recent research has highlighted the importance of brand value congruence in engendering employee brand building behaviors (Chang et al. 2012; Morhart et al. 2009). The rationale underpinning the value congruence effect lies in the role of values in guiding individuals’ attitudes and behaviors. For example, people are more attracted to others with similar values and have greater intentions to form and maintain relationships with similar people to reinforce their self-esteem (Smith 1998; Zhang and Bloemer 2008). Thus, we argue that, when employees perceive their value systems are consistent with the brand values, they are more likely to deliver brand performance. However, the theoretical foundation and comprehensive measurement with respect to employee perceived brand value congruence, as well as the outcomes of this construct is lacking. This study aims to fill this literature gap and offer both theoretical and managerial insights regarding internal branding initiatives that can foster employee – brand value congruence. Of particular significance in this examination is afforded through a new approach to measuring brand value congruence.