CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Critical analysis

Critical analysis

Executive summary

At present, online purchases of travel-related products through web channels have experienced an unprecedented growth rate. Research by PhoCusWright anticipates that for the first time online travel bookings will comprise over half of all travel transactions in the United States in 2007 . In order to capture this lucrative online business, hospitality and tourism managers have been, and will continue, enhancing their competitive advantages by focusing their resources on the virtual business environment.In Mainland China (hereafter known as China), the development of e-commerce has great potential. It has been reported that there are 94 million Chinese online users, and this number will reach 140 million by 2007 . Richardson stated that China would become the world's biggest online market in the next few years. Still, the increasing growth of online consumer purchases offers both challenges and opportunities for hospitality and tourism businesses. It is essential to provide well-perceived service quality, satisfy their customers, and build loyalty for long-term customer value in the virtual environment. Various studies have been devoted to the importance of service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer experience in the virtual environment .

Introduction

Despite considerable empirical research, results on the relationships among constructs related to information system (IS) success, as well as the determinants of IS success, are often inconsistent. A comprehensive understanding of IS success thus remains elusive. In an attempt to address this situation, which may partly be due to the exclusion of potentially important constructs from prior parsimonious models of IS success, we present and test a comprehensive theoretical model. This model explains interrelationships among four constructs representing the success of a specific IS (user satisfaction, system use, perceived usefulness, and system quality), and the relationships of these IS success constructs with four user-related constructs (user experience with ISs, user training in ISs, user attitude toward ISs, and user participation in the development of the specific IS) and two constructs representing the context (top-management support for ISs and facilitating conditions for ISs). To test the model, we first used meta-analysis to compute a correlation matrix for the constructs in the model based on 612 findings from 121 studies published between 1980 and 2004, and then used this correlation matrix as input for a LISREL analysis of the model. Overall, we found excellent support for the theoretical model. The results underline the importance of user-related and contextual attributes in IS success and raise questions about some commonly believed relationships.

Justification

Website quality

According to Jahng , an e-commerce system is a one kind of information system. Recently, a number of studies have addressed the design of web-based e-commerce application systems and identified many different design features. For instance, Liu identified some key design factors of e-commerce websites. These key design factors consist of information quality, service quality, playfulness, system design quality, and system use. In their study, Liu found that a well-designed website would lead to better customer recall and recognition and a favorable attitude toward the site and its ...