Staying in a hotel or peer-to-peer accommodation sharing? A discrete choice experiment with online reviews and discount strategies
ISSN: 1066-2243
Article publication date: 2 November 2020
Issue publication date: 10 March 2021
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to elicit the preferences of potential travelers for different property listings' attributes (online review number, positive valence rate of reviews and discount strategy) when selecting hotels and peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation sharing on online booking platforms.
Design/methodology/approach
A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted with 291 respondents with accommodation needs. They were asked to choose between pairs of listings.
Findings
The authors found that when booking accommodation online, complex discount strategies were not determinant both in selecting hotels and P2P accommodations. Positive valence rate of reviews has a higher impact on the selection of traditional hotels than P2P accommodations, while the number of online reviews has a higher impact on the selection of P2P accommodations than traditional hotels. The authors further discuss the effect of each attribute on online accommodation selection in terms of price ranges of the property listings.
Research limitations/implications
The findings provide suggestions for platform operators and product/service providers to improve their marketing strategies and optimize their management efforts.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies that investigate the role of property listings' attributes on the selections between hotels and P2P accommodations. The findings from this research study could be generalized to other online platforms and electronic commerce-related transactions.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Mr. Shixiang Gao for his help during data collection. The authors thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71871061, Grant No. 72001005), Fund for building world class universities (disciplines) of Renmin University of China (No. KYGJD2020001), National Demonstration Center for Experimental Education of Information Technology and Management (Renmin University of China), Public Computing Cloud in Renmin University of China, BISU 2020 Research Sailing Project for New Faculty (No. 21110012001) and BISU 2020 Top Youth Academic Team Project for providing funding for part of this research.
Citation
Fu, S., Cheng, X., Bao, Y., Bilgihan, A. and Okumus, F. (2021), "Staying in a hotel or peer-to-peer accommodation sharing? A discrete choice experiment with online reviews and discount strategies", Internet Research, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 654-676. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-01-2020-0031
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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