Potential Antecedents and Consequences of Online Confusion in Tourism Industry

Information technology has changed almost every aspect of today’s people life. It also has brought new visions to companies and consumers to enhance their abilities and opportunities in order to experience higher levels of profitability and service quality. But easy and rapid access to information can lead to bulk of information and complication information processing in consumer side and also dissatisfaction or loss of potential customers’ advocacy. For this reason this study is aimed first to investigate the factors that can function as the antecedents of online confusion and then to determine the consequence of such confusion for the firms or service organizations in tourism industry. In order to achieve these objectives, consumers who have used online travel booking services to book for a travel are considered as the study participants. The research is conducted in Isfahan city as one of the main destinations selected by both domestic and international tourists. Data were collected through self-administrated questionnaires with confirmed validity and reliability from 110 tourists who have used online tourism service in the past. Structural Equation Modeling was used in order to test the proposed hypotheses using smart PLS software. The findings confirm the influence of price consciousness and quality consciousness on consumers’ confusion. According to these findings although prior experience can affect overload and unclarity confusion, it does not affect similarity confusion. The findings also show that need for cognition does not influence any type of confusion. Finally, this study found that all three types of confusion can affect consumers’ intention to repeat online purchase.