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The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework to empirically examine and explain the antecedent factors of consumers’ adoption intention toward co-creatively developed new travel services using smart phone apps. The antecedents include consumer innovativeness, trust, degree of co-creation that results in positive adoption intention. In this study, tourists’ degree of co-creation acts as a mediator between trust and adoption intention.

Data were collected through online surveys from tourists that resulted into a total of 152 valid responses. An analysis of data was done by applying the confirmatory factor analysis along with structural equation modeling.

The findings of this study indicate that both consumer innovativeness and trust significantly affect adoption intention directly and indirectly via degree of co-creation among tourists and e-travel service providers. Degree of co-creation acts as a mediator between the above-mentioned relationships.

Use of smart phone apps by tourists’ and e-travel companies to co-create new services and tourists’ adoption intention have been examined in context of co-created service innovation that limits the generalizability of the results to other industries. A few other limitations are also discussed.

The findings of this study guides the policy planners and e-travel company managers toward application of mobile technology in consumer co-creation in context of service innovation.

Tourists’ trust in the e-travel companies and their innovativeness were found to influence their degree of co-creation, which are instrumental in developing adoption intention toward co-creative new service innovation using smart phone apps in India. This is a significant addition to the existing literature, as studies on co-creation activities aiming to co-develop new services by tourists and e-travel companies in India are scant in number. In addition to this, the newly developed conceptual model also highlights the role of degree of co-creation as a mediator between two antecedents (trust and innovativeness) and outcome (tourists’ adoption intention), which are considered as new additions to the co-creative service innovation literature.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a scale to measure customer social participation in brand communities, specifically e-travel companies’ communities.

A qualitative research has been undertaken to generate a pool of items. Based on Churchill’s (1979) scale development process, numerous reliability and validity tests have been conducted to confirm the scale structure. Data were collected through online and field surveys from the students and hotel guests who have either subscribed, liked or joined any e-travel service companies’ community brand page using any social networking site or have ever posted or considered reviews and ratings of any e-travel service companies via their official site or via a mobile app while planning their travel.

The findings depict nine items on a three-dimensional scale for measuring customer participation in travel brand communities created on social networking sites.

The findings provide important implications for hotel and travel managers and are likely to encourage future studies in the field of social media and travel brand communities.

This paper contributes to the literature by providing refinement to the distinct operationalization and conceptualization of customer online participation, specifically in social media-based travel brand communities. This paper is the first to develop a multidimensional scale of customer social participation in e-travel companies’ communities. This is a new addition to existing literature, as the majority of empirical studies in this field are from participation other than customer social participation and contexts different from e-travel companies.

The purpose of this paper is to construct and validate customer social participation (CSP) scale in the context of brand communities on social media.

In this study, various tests for reliability and validity have been performed to confirm scale structure. Data were collected using survey method from the student and non-student sample.

The results confirm a multi-dimensional scale with nine items for measuring customer participation in social media brand communities.

The results of this study present several implications for online brand communities managers and are likely to support future research in the context of social media brand communities.

This paper is the first to develop a multi-dimensional scale of customer participation in social media brand communities. This is a new addition to existing literature, as the majority of empirical studies in this field are from participation other than CSP, and contexts different from social media brand communities.

Online information research on hotels is gradually emerging as a key area of research with the increasing use of social media as a platform for co-creative service innovation (CCSI). The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between the key drivers of co-creation intention in the social media context. Understanding relationships between key drivers of customers’ co-creation intention will prove valuable in advancing current knowledge about service innovation using social media. The key drivers examined in this study are – customer innovativeness, attitude toward CCSI on social media, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. This knowledge will be of considerable value for its practical application in the hotel industry.

Data were collected from 346 hotel guests using survey method. Structural equation modeling with a bootstrapping estimation was used to analyze the data.

The results show that customer innovativeness, attitude toward CCSI on social media, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control positively influence both co-creation and adoption intention. Further, it was also found that co-creation intention mediates the relationship between its two driving factors, namely, customer innovativeness, attitude toward CCSI in social media and adoption intention.

The findings provide theoretical implications for hospitality discipline. The findings also provide various strategies hospitality firms can use to co-create service innovation through the effective use of social media.

The relationships examined in the present study have not been tested previously; this is the first attempt of the kind. Thus, the associations established in this study form an important contribution to the existing body of knowledge in co-creation, service innovation and social media literature.

This study aims to apply the stimulus-organism-response framework to uncover the underlying mechanism by which the perceived helpfulness of online customer reviews (OCRs) drives behavioural intentions in mobile travel app commerce. Also, the current study explores how vendor-driven perceived usefulness of a product and its attributes influence the mediated relationship between perceived helpfulness of OCRs (OCRs helpfulness) and behavioural intentions.

The online survey (n = 151) was used to collect the data. The authors used structural equation modelling and the bias-corrected bootstrap method to test the proposed conceptual model for mediation and moderated-mediation effect.

Findings indicate that the perceived OCRs helpfulness has an indirect positive effect, via trust and attitude, on travel app downloading intention. Moreover, results suggest that the presence of vendor cues (vendor-generated informational content about a travel app) does not significantly moderate the mediating effect of perceived OCRs helpfulness on travel app downloading intention.

The present study reinforces the applicability of the warranting principle in the context of travel app commerce by exploring the relative effectiveness of customer-generated and vendor-generated informational content in influencing travel app downloading intention.

本研究旨在应用SOR框架来解释在线评论的有效性影响在旅行APP行为意向的潜在机理。此外，本研究探索了供应商驱动的对产品的认知有效性和商品属性来影响认知有效性和行为意向的中介关系。

本研究运用网络调研 （n=151）来收集数据。本论文运用结构方程建模和偏差纠正辅助程序来测试提出的理论模型和调节式中介作用。

研究结果显示在线评论的有效性通过信任度和态度对旅行APP的下载使用意向具有间接正相关的作用。此外，结果显示当供应商信息（供应商制定的有关旅行APP的信息内容）并不能有效调节网络顾客评论对下载意向的中介作用。

本研究加强了担保原则在旅行APP贸易背景下的适用性，探索了顾客驱动和供应商驱动的信息内容对旅行APP下载意向影响的相对有效性。

With increased competition in service sector due to dynamic nature of customers’ taste and preferences, service providers have realized the importance of co-creating with customers across various stages of new service development. Co-creating with customers require a focused attention on the psychological variables that influence customers to participate in developing a new service. However, availability of scant literature creates difficulty in comprehending co-creative hotel service innovation practices, especially in developing country like India. The purpose of this paper is to explore the inter-relationships among the customer participation in hotel service innovation variables with the help of interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach.

ISM approach is used to determine the direction of customer participation and categorization of psychological variables with their driving and dependence power. Identification of related variables was done through a review of literature initially and arrived at a common consensus through brainstorming sessions with academicians and hotel industry experts.

The results indicate that a few variables possess higher driving power that include: consumer innovativeness, customer participative behavior, customer socialization, willingness to co-create, role clarity, customer ability and their interlinking. Thus, the research contributes in the development of relationship among various identified variables of customer participation in service innovation (CPSI) using ISM.

This study suggests that hoteliers should co-create with customers to develop new services by understanding their psychological variables that play a crucial role determining their active participation in new hotel service offerings.

This study suggests that hoteliers should co-create with customers to develop new services by understanding the enablers of customer participation in co-creative hotel service innovation. Hoteliers can have hierarchical map of their customers for co-creating at different stages of service innovation or can segregate the variables as per their driving and dependence power for enhanced applicability of the variables. Further, the observed inter-relationships among the CPSI variables can guide the managers in planning and implementing identified relationships for successful implementation of co-creative service innovation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge this study is the first to provide an integrated model using ISM and Matrix Impact Cross-Reference Multiplication Applied to a Classification (MICMAC) analysis with a goal to identify and classify various key enablers of customer participation in co-creative hotel service innovation in India. The authors believe that this study will enhance the understanding of the psychological factors influencing customer-firm co-creative service innovation activities and help the academicians and industry practitioners to select right enablers for customer participation in co-creative hotel service innovation. Thus, this study will be the foundation for studying co-creative service innovation using the ISM and MICMAC approaches.

Travel organisations, as travel agencies, tour operators, hotels, etc. focus their research too much on measuring service quality level and identifying errors. This strategy results in incremental improvements. This paper will focus more on how to improve the service by using strategies that further both incremental and innovative improvements of service. The paper demonstrates that an importance‐performance survey combined with service blueprinting and benchmarking is a useful strategy to improve and innovate service. To understand this strategy a quality management model that integrates incremental and fundamental (innovative) service improvements is presented.

Tourists regularly make use of their smartphones while staying at tourist destinations. Several studies have studied the outcomes of smartphone use at travel destinations. The current paper believes tourists’ use of their smartphone or its apps because of their contact with tour friends, social loneliness-related concerns or its aesthetic scope. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors of continued use of smartphone apps via travelers during their stay at a tourism destination, framed within the UTAUT2 model (unified theory of acceptance and use of technology), given intrinsic user attributes (innovativeness), tourism destination aspect (aesthetic scope and social loneliness) and one of the key characteristics of mobile devices (portability).

The sample consists of 357 smartphone users who travelled to some tourist destinations and used some mobile apps during their stay. Data was analyzed using the structural equation modeling approach.

The findings of the study show that the UTAUT2 model can effectively explain the use of smartphone apps at tourism destinations and characteristics of the user and mobile device, does affect behaviour outcomes (smartphone, intention to reuse app, satisfaction towards trip and loyalty towards app).

This paper is mainly important due to its emphasis on smartphone apps’ use during the travel stay, as the majority of the existing literature focusses on prior steps ( service booking).

This study investigated an appended belief-attitude-intention (BAI) model, which included two antecedent beliefs of attitude and two marketing factors as additional determinants of air traveller behavioural intentions towards low-cost airlines (LCAs). The hypothesized relationships were compared across different behaviouristic groups based on flying frequency, travel purpose and travel party size.

Survey data from 331 air travellers intercepted at a major international airport in Thailand were analysed using structural equation modelling and bootstrapping multiple-group comparisons to investigate the hypothesized mediation and moderation effects.

Results indicate that behavioural intention towards LCAs is largely influenced by perceived price, followed by attitude towards LCAs and subjective norm and not determined by airport accessibility. Antecedent beliefs of perceived service quality and uncertainty avoidance influence behavioural intention, as mediated by attitude towards LCAs. The role of subjective norm varied among air traveller groups.

Managers can manage price perceptions by focusing on LCA affordability and they should closely scrutinize these air traveller behaviouristic groups to identify opportunities to appeal to the distinctive cognitive responses of traveller segments.

This study tested an appended BAI model across three different air traveller behavioural characteristics, a multi-group analytical approach that can reveal meaningful implications, yet has been underused in LCA research.

For the internet to realise its full marketing potential, travel agencies need a well‐designed e‐travel site. Yet the attributes that affect customers' perceptions leading to acceptance of e‐travel sites are still unclear. This study seeks to focus on why users accept or reject e‐travel sites and how users' acceptance is affected by three widely recognised features of sites – relevant information content, information quality, and functionality needs service.

The study analysed a survey of 242 users of Taiwanese e‐travel sites to test the hypothesised expanded technology acceptance model.

The empirical results indicate that the information content, information quality and functionality service of e‐travel sites strongly determine the perceived ease of use. Relevant information content and information quality also strongly determine perceived usefulness, which in turn leads to the behavioural intention to use e‐travel sites.

The findings of the study suggest that web site information must be sufficiently provided, quickly expanded and constantly updated to maintain correct and current content to meet users' information needs as well as an appropriate assistance function to provide good levels of web‐based customer service. These attributes should satisfy visitors, making them likely to revisit e‐travel sites.