Bài viết tập trung thảo luận về mức độ tác động của các đặc điểm của đánh giá trực tuyến bao gồm nội dung, xếp hạng đánh giá, giá trị, tính kịp thời, độ dài và hình thức lên quyết định đặt phòng trực tuyến của khách sạn giữa các kênh OTA. Mời các bạn cùng tham khảo!
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR YOUNG RESEARCHERS IN ECONOMICS & BUSINESS 2020 ICYREB 2020 HOW USEFUL ARE ONLINE REVIEW’S CHARACTERISTICS? OBSERVATION THROUGH OTA CHANNELS CÁC ĐẶC ĐIỂM CỦA ĐÁNH GIÁ TRỰC TUYẾN HỮU ÍCH ĐẾN MỨC NÀO? QUAN SÁT THƠNG QUA CÁC KÊNH OTA MA, Nguyen Cao Lien Phuoc - MA, Nguyen Minh Tam - MA, Chu My Giang University of Economics, The University of Danang, Vietnam tamnm@due.edu.vn Abstract The purpose of this paper is to discuss the effect of online reviews ‘characteristics including content, review rating, valence, timeliness, length and form on hotel online booking decision among OTA channels A multivariate regression approach was utilized to analyze data from 421 responses of tourists who stay in small and medium-sized hotels in Da Nang and online populations from August 2019 to December 2019 The findings indicate that the content of online reviews and review rating have the greatest impact on potential tourists’ booking decisions while timeliness and form of online reviews show a lower-level influence Especially, the length of online reviews fails to gain substantial attraction of readers when looking for accommodation for their future trips In addition, the result witnesses the positive relationship between valence of online reviews and booking intentions towards a hotel This study provides a theoretical insight into the influence level of six common characteristics of online reviews Keywords: online reviews, hotel online booking decision Tóm tắt Bài báo tập trung thảo luận mức độ tác động đặc điểm đánh giá trực tuyến bao gồm nội dung, xếp hạng đánh giá, giá trị, tính kịp thời, độ dài hình thức lên định đặt phòng trực tuyến khách sạn kênh OTA Phương pháp hồi quy đa biến sử dụng để phân tích liệu từ 421 phản hồi khách du lịch lưu trú khách sạn vừa nhỏ Đà Nẵng qua khảo sát trực tuyến dã đọc đánh giá trực tuyến trang OTA từ tháng năm 2019 đến tháng 12 năm 2019 Kết cho thấy nội dung đánh giá trực tuyến đánh giá xếp hạng có mức độ tác động lớn đến định đặt phòng khách du lịch tiềm tính kịp thời hình thức đánh giá trực tuyến cho thấy mức độ ảnh hưởng thấp Đặc biệt, độ dài đánh giá trực tuyến không thu hút quan tâm độc giả tìm kiếm chỗ cho chuyến họ Ngoài ra, kết cho thấy mối quan hệ tích cực giá trị đánh giá trực tuyến ý định đặt phòng khách sạn Nghiên cứu cung cấp nhìn lý thuyết mức độ ảnh hưởng sáu đặc điểm chung đánh giá trực tuyến Từ khoá: đánh giá trực tuyến, định đặt phòng khách sạn 795 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR YOUNG RESEARCHERS IN ECONOMICS & BUSINESS 2020 ICYREB 2020 Introduction In the ever-increasing development of individual non-mandatory tours compared to a guided tour, travelers tend to look carefully for information about their future trips (Kim et al., 2017) Especially, because of the intangible characteristics of travel products, User-generated content or online reviews are becoming popular when finding advice about local foods, accommodation or must-see destinations (Chan et al., 2017) Online reviews show a significant role in making customers’ decisions and even in hotel booking field Therefore, Online travel agencies (OTAs) have recently emerged as a useful and trustworthy channel where tourists able to get all the needed information Hernández-Méndez et al (2015) Customers can search; compare accommodation’s’ quality and price; and make reservations directly through some well-known platforms like Agoda, Booking.com According to the study, two-thirds of online bookings have particularly come from OTA channels As a result, marketing budget for OTA should be raised if hotel management officers want to boost selling revenue One of the important factors influencing the choice of one accommodation among a list of hotels listed on OTA channels is the online reviews of previous tourists who are used to stay or experience services at that hotel Although there are a number of works investigated which factors of online reviews influence hotel online booking decision ( Chan et al., 2017; El-Said, 2020), a lack of studies have focused on the influence level of online reviews on hotel booking intention To fill this gap, this study is designed to measure how online reviews influence booking decisions as well as propose solutions for accommodation businesses Literature review 2.1 Content of online reviews Online user-generated content (UGC) and online reviews had a significant impact on travel behaviour (Ye et al., 2011) The content of the online reviews can be seen as one of the most important aspects of the online reviews Although there are a variety of terms to describe its definition, it is easier to call it as the depth and the width of information provided by previous customers (Schindler & Bickart, 2012; Racherla & Friske, 2012) Marcirio (2012) presented a detailed analysis of users ‘online reviews of small-sized and medium-sized hotels (SMH) The findings showed that rooms and services are two concepts gaining more attention of potential visitors In addition, the knowledge of hotels ‘staff which are foreign language skill, local famous destination-related understanding; and their attitude, including the friendliness and the usefulness have also considered by the majority of comments As a result, the content of reviews is an important factor to help reviews attract consumers (Ghose & Ipeirotis, 2006) Cao et al (2011) pointed out that the content of the reviews also positively or negatively affects the purchase process of the customers, thus influencing the decision to book a hotel Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed as H1: Content of online reviews influences hotel online booking decision 2.2 Review rating After actually consuming or experiencing the tangible products or intangible services, customers tend to express their feeling by evaluating or scoring a given product Review rating is measured by the range from one star (poor), which shows extremely negative view of the product, to five stars (excellence) There was a great deal of works that coined how customer ratings (stars 796 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR YOUNG RESEARCHERS IN ECONOMICS & BUSINESS 2020 ICYREB 2020 and points) have a great influence on their buying decision (Zhu & Zhang, 2010) Major of researchers agreed the influence of Rating on the choice of customers (Chen & Xie, (2008) Especially, star rating is on the first stage of the decision-making process (Liu, 2013), creating initial attraction and becoming an important way to increase the patience of readers to review online Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed as: H2: Review rating influences hotel online booking decision 2.3 Valence of online reviews Valence of online reviews could be formed in two different aspects of the negative (lost) and the positive ( benefits) (Zhao et al., 2015) In 2009, Ye and her team agreed the important role of positive comments in the online booking process However, after that, A number of tests found out that both positive and negative information are able to impact customers ‘trust and product evaluation, leading to the increase in the ability of booking intentions (Browning & Sparks, 2013) Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed as: H3: valence of online reviews influences hotel online booking decision 2.4 Timeliness of online reviews While searching for information, customers may face some difficulties regarding timeliness of information It is measured by the date of the online reviews published (Gretzel et al., (2007) This aspect refers to the currency, timeliness and up-to-date characteristic of information (Cheung et al., 2008) Despite this general importance, the characteristics of information as timeliness is often neglected in the online review- related works Research on online feedback hypothesized that currency of information is important in defining its quality (Gretzel et al., 2007) Customers who intend to purchase in a near future depends more on current information When customers read old feedback, they may think that such information may be outdated, thus, not reliable to base upon in making decision (McKinney et al., 2002) Similarly, some researchers also found out that in e-commerce environment, the feedback on products which is more current tends to draw more attention from customers (Cheung & Thadiani, 2012) It evidenced that 59.3% of totally surveyed-customers claimed their higher dependence of more current feedback (Gretzel et al., 2007) The influence can be improved by highlighting the updated features, and displaying the more current feedback before the older ones (Chen,2008) as usefulness of information reduces over time (Liu, 2006) Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed as: H4: Timeliness of online reviews influences hotel online booking decision 2.5 Length of online reviews Another important aspect of the online review is the length of the review The length of the review is the total number of characters entered (Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006) Some works confirmed that the expansive and contested reviews will provide enough information for consumers to rate the quality of a product review (De Ascaniis & Morasso, 2011) Long assessments can contain more information (Pan & Zhang, 2011), increasing the convinced and reliable arguments (Filieri, 2015) than short ones In addition, consumers who spend more time in writing a long review are more likely to be trustworthy than someone who only writes a few lines (Pan & Zhang, 2011) Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed as: H5: Length of online reviews influences hotel online booking decision 797 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR YOUNG RESEARCHERS IN ECONOMICS & BUSINESS 2020 ICYREB 2020 2.6 Form of review An image can be seen as a form of an attractive review that usually appears in the first section of a review or an additional review In a normal way, online reviews may contain vivid images that reflect the true quality of the goods, such as color or inconsistencies of technical information The visual reviews can reduce the consumer’s risk in the buying process and provide additional experience for the reader In the process of perceiving consumer information, image evaluation has a great influence on the actual buying behavior This is even more important for experience services like invisible hotel industry, however, imaging allows us to visualize the service context and helps consumers to infer about its level of quality before purchasing Scholars believe that images are always more persuasive than words because readers can get more objective information about the destination from photos of Fang et al., (2016) Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed as: H6: Form of online reviews influences hotel online booking decision Theoretical Framework and hypothesis 3.1 Proposed model Although there is a list of previous studies that have discussed online reviews and the effects of its on travelers’ choice of accommodation, they have mostly focused on studying the effects of an online assessment in general or a specific aspect of the online evaluation Most studies focused on how online product evaluation of product choice impact on product choice and buyer experience (Chua and Banerjee, 2016; Mudambi and Schuff, 2010; Racherla and Friske, 2012) From earlier domestic and international studies on online reviews and the impact of online reviews on travel accommodation decisions, research model to explain more specifically was launched - Independent variables: content of review, review rating, valence of review, recentness of review, length of review, form of review - Dependent variable: Hotel booking decision Figure Proposed research model 798 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR YOUNG RESEARCHERS IN ECONOMICS & BUSINESS 2020 ICYREB 2020 3.2 Methodology By using convenience sampling method, paper-based surveys were distributed to random travelers who already stayed in some small-sized and medium-sized hotels in Da Nang City, Vietnam from September 2019 to November 2019; and online surveys for those who read online reviews on the OTA site from September 2019 to November 2019 The questionnaire has two sperate parts including questions about demographic profile of respondents and construct items In particular, content of online reviews (CR) includes four items (CR1-CR4) adopted from Marcirio Silveira Chaves (2014) such as hotel services, room, location of hotel, staff respectively; five items of review rating (RR) adopted from Forman et al (2008), five items of valence of online reviews (VR) adopted from Osman Ahmed El-Said (2019), four items of timeliness of online reviews were applied from Cheung & Thadani (2012) In addition, three items of length of online review were adopted and modifed from Pan & Zhang, (2011); De Ascaniis & Morasso, (2011); Filieri, (2016) Form of review were measured by four items from Fang et al., (2016); Papathanassis & Knolle, (2011); Peck & Childers, (2003) Three items of hotel online booking decision were adopted from Osman Ahmed El-Said (2019) The five-point Likert scale with “1” (totally disagree) and “5” (totally agree) was used to measure all of items 3.3 Sample The main online survey gained 421 valid respondents Table summarize the demographic of the respondents While just under 48 percent were male; approximately 52% were female The data also shows that about 93 percent of the respondents are in the age of 18-35 Table1 Descriptive statistics Demographic Variables Sex Male Female otal 220 52.3 47.7 421 100% 18-25 221 52.5 >36 24 5.7 26-35 170 1.4 40.4 Total 421 100% Student 141 33.5 Freelancer 83 Office Occupation Frequency (%) 201