Search

The phenomenon of religion, as a crucial element of human behaviour, is one of the main motives for travelling. Although religious tourism movements are increasing, the behaviour patterns of religious tourists on various communication platforms such as social media have been mostly neglected. The objective of this study is to examine the antecedents of religious tourists' intention to share tourism experiences on social media, based on the Technology Acceptance Model. The data were collected from 325 international tourists visiting Vatican City. Findings indicated that user experience level with social media influences perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, which are significant determinants of intention to share tourism experiences on social media. Results also highlighted the negative moderating role of religiosity level on the relationship between these variables. Hereby, the study contributed to the literature by showing that religious tourists represent a heterogeneous market segment having different religiosity levels and social media usage patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The antecedents of customer engagement have been extensively examined in marketing and management literature since it is vital for the firm performance. Researchers have long assumed that relationship between these variables is linear. However, some asymmetric connections may be undiscovered. Drawing inspiration from the three-factor theory of customer satisfaction, this study investigates the possibility of asymmetric relationships between service quality attributes and customer engagement. The results revealed that service quality attributes can be categorized as the basic, excitement, and performance factors based on their varying impacts on customer engagement. Therefore, the findings reflected that the three-factor theory of customer satisfaction can be applied to customer engagement context. This research is a pioneering work in the customer engagement literature as it provided a new perspective to academics by showing that the three-factor theory of customer engagement can be used to gain more detailed and actionable insight to enhance customer engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile applications have become an indispensable marketing medium for tourism companies. Given that half of the users delete the applications soon after completing their transactions, it is vital to improving the application quality based on the users' expectations. Thus, drawing on the Stimulus–Organism–Response theory, this study investigates the determinants of customer citizenship behaviour related to mobile travel applications. It is a type of value co-creation behaviour, including sharing feedback with the company to help improving its service provision. The analysis results of 315 data collected from travel application users revealed that flow experience and customer engagement, which are affected by mobile application quality, are strong determinants of customer citizenship behaviour. Alongside with the discussion of the findings, the theoretical and managerial implications are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing use of mobile applications by travellers and the high adaption of tourism companies into this new contact and sales platform, made it necessary to comprehensively investigate the mobile application users' behaviours. This research combines the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to develop a theoretical background in examining travel booking behaviour of mobile application users. The conceptual model suggests that mobile application quality (MAQ) directly affects perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) which influence the intention to use (IU) mobile applications. Moreover, the offline brand trust (BT) has been hypothesised as a moderator between PEOU and PU's impacts on IU mobile applications. Analyses results indicated that system and service quality dimensions of MAQ significantly affect IU mobile application via PEOU and PU. Moreover, offline BT had both direct and moderator influences on the formation of IU mobile application. The study findings contributed to the theory in understanding mobile application users' behaviours and suggested valuable managerial strategies in the m-commerce context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite numerous studies investigating flow experience in the adventure tourism context, there is a lack of research concentrating on tourists' flow experience during travel. This study aims to explore the relationships amongst destination attribute perceptions, flow experience (consisting of focus attention, time distortion, and loss of self-consciousness components), and satisfaction variables. By adapting a quantitative research method, 938 data were collected from British, German, and Russian tourists visiting Antalya, Turkey. The study results reveal that destination attribute perceptions significantly affect flow experience components, which influence tourist satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications of the study findings are discussed, and some recommendations concerning future research are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]