THE IMPORTANCE OF RISK-REDUCING VALUE-ADDED SERVICES IN ONLINE ENVIRONMENTS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON VARIOUS SEGMENTS OF LEISURE TOURISM
Few customers buy tourism products online. The reason for this may be a lack of risk-reducing, value-added services online. Thus, access to risk-reducing value-added services is supposed to increase online purchase of tourism products. In this article it is proposed that the importance of access to risk-reducing value-added services will vary across customer segments. Customers are divided into segments based on 1) Internet experience, 2) experience with tourism products, 3) search mode, 4) product complexity, and 5) perceived level of risk associated with purchasing tourism products. Perceived risk is found to have an effect on the importance of access to 13 of 17 value-added services. The other segment variables are found to have significant effects on fewer value-added services.
Keywords: Customer segments; Risk reduction; Value-added services
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Breiviksveien 40, 5045 Bergen, Norway
Publication date: 01 January 2003
- Information Technology & Tourism is the first scientific journal dealing with the exciting relationship between information technology and tourism. Information and communication systems embedded in a global net have profound influence on the tourism and travel industry. Reservation systems, distributed multimedia systems, highly mobile working places, electronic markets, and the dominant position of tourism applications in the Internet are noticeable results of this development. And the tourism industry poses several challenges to the IT field and its methodologies.
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