Browsing by Author "Tang, Liang"

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    The impact of restaurant innovativeness on consumer loyalty: The mediating role of perceived quality
    Kim, Eojina; Nicolau, Juan Luis; Tang, Liang (Sage, 2021-01-07)
    Although hospitality industry has consistently invested resources in innovation, the path by which a brand’s innovativeness influences consumers’ loyalty remains unclear. The purpose of this study is to establish a research model that represents the relationships of customers’ perceived restaurant’s innovativeness at brand level, perceived quality, and levels of loyalty. Specifically, five subdimensions (differentiation, dynamic brand, innovativeness brand, new leader, and idea generator) measure restaurant’s innovativeness at brand level. Perceived quality consists of the food and service aspects. The result shows that among brand innovativeness, differentiation predicts better loyalty whereas dynamic brand, innovativeness brand, new leader, and idea generator are less effective, with mediating effects of food quality and service quality. This outcome potentially expands the theoretical foundation of brand innovativeness in the hospitality discipline, while providing a promising marketing approach that empowers patrons with brand innovativeness through differentiation.
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    Predicting Conversion Rates in Online Hotel Bookings with Customer Reviews
    Tang, Liang; Wang, Xi; Kim, Eojina (MDPI, 2022-09-30)
    E-commerce in the hospitality and tourism field has already ranked No. 2 among all online shopping categories worldwide. However, customers’ visits to a hotel booking website cannot guarantee the generation of sales, while the conversion rate is regarded as the indicator that effectively assesses the e-commerce website performance. This study aimed to investigate the influential factors of conversion rates from both affective content and the communication style of customer’s online reviews. The affective content was evaluated with eight emotional dimensions (i.e., joy, sadness, anger, fear, trust, disgust, anticipation, and surprise) in Plutchik’s emotion wheel, and the communication style perspective was assessed with linguistic style matching (LSM). In total, 111,926 customer reviews from 641 hotels in five cities in the U.S. were collected for the analysis. Results indicated that LSM and four emotions have significant impacts on hotel conversion rates. This research contributes to the knowledge body of customers’ conversion behaviors on hotel booking websites and offers pertinent practical implications.