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International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management
E-commerce performance in hospitality and tourism

Nan Hua,
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IJCHM
28,9
E-commerce performance in
hospitality and tourism
Nan Hua
University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA
2052
Received 21 May 2015
Revised 20 October 2015 Abstract
3 February 2016 Purpose – This study aims to examine the extant E-commerce performance literature to derive a
Accepted 12 February 2016 coherent framework to further the understanding, identify research gaps and suggest potential future
study directions.
Design/methodology/approach – Based on theoretical sampling (Corbin and Strauss, 2008), this
study followed Greenhalgh et al. (2009) for the paper sample collection and used exploratory methods
before the snowballing technique to identify key sources to uncover the E-commerce performance
themes and prior findings systematically.
Findings – By reviewing and synthesizing 155 recent articles, this study proposed an integrated
framework of E-commerce performance to organize the complex literature parsimoniously. This study
found that E-commerce performance exhibits three key dimensions and is influenced by market
E-commerce environment, organization E-commerce environment and the dynamic and interactive
relationships in between.
Practical implications – The proposed framework offers industry practitioners opportunities to
understand determinants and be updated with current practices of E-commerce performance. The
findings of this study further point practitioners to directions that can lead to better E-commerce
performance.
Originality/value – This study produced a cohesive framework of E-commerce performance based
on an extensive review of the literature in both the mainstream and hospitality and tourism fields,
addressing the issue of the currently fragmented understanding on E-commerce performance in
hospitality and tourism.
Keywords Tourism, Electronic commerce, Performance measurement, Hospitality industry,
Hospitality, E-commerce performance
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
Over the past two decades, the explosion of research interest related to E-commerce
performance has stimulated a substantial number of academic studies (Chae et al., 2014;
Hua et al., 2015; Law et al., 2014; Yang et al., 2015). Although these studies have
significantly enriched the body of knowledge for E-commerce performance, new
challenges surface as the sheer work volume has become more or less an obstacle for
knowledge development and the literature has still remained fragmented. In particular,
an overarching framework that can provide guidance and structure to the swiftly
increasing body of academic literature is lacking. Therefore, the evolution of
International Journal of E-commerce performance literature calls for a systematic integration and synthesis of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management existing knowledge to inform the next wave of academic endeavors in this field.
Vol. 28 No. 9, 2016
pp. 2052-2079
An information technology (IT) – intensive environment (Hua et al., 2015) has
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0959-6119
managed to come through and stay for the hospitality and tourism industry, regardless
DOI 10.1108/IJCHM-05-2015-0247 of the well-recognized reluctance for hoteliers to adopt new technologies (Buhalis, 2003;
Law and Jogaratnam, 2005) or the evolving harmony for business stakeholders to E-commerce
welcome IT progressing with tourism hand in hand (Poon, 1993; Sheldon, 1997). performance
Business processes, such as business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer
(B2C), are digitized (Beldona et al., 2012), and attentions have shifted from promotion
(1960s), product development and marketing research (1970s) and revenue management
(1980s) (Dev et al., 2010) to focus on internet- and IT-mediated business processes, such
as consumer-to-consumer (C2C) social activities (Morosan et al., 2014). 2053
While IT has increasingly permeated the industry as supported by its own
advancement and accommodating business models (Law et al., 2014), a holistic
customer/client experience is a common goal most contemporary digital processes
are striving for (Nyheim and Connolly, 2012). In addition, these digital processes are
often characterized by usefulness, playfulness and ease of use (Morosan and Jeong,
2008). As a result, mobile and social networking business-related technology
(Berkus, 2013), for example, is gaining momentum over traditional personal

computers (Hua et al., 2015). Electronic commerce (E-commerce), therefore, can be
considered as a sophisticated IT process that supports achieving the holistic
customer/client experience from aspects of design, communication, delivery,
fulfillment and evaluation (Hua et al., 2015), with the underlying structural vehicle
evolving from computer reservation systems (1970s), to global distribution systems
(1980s), to internet (1990s) and to today’s organization-facilitated C2C virtual
network social activities (Buhalis, 2003; eBusiness W@tch, 2006; Emmer et al., 1993;
Morosan et al., 2014; O’Connor, 1999).
While serving as the fundamental media for most customer- and client-related
activities in today’s markets, E-commerce carries a full commercial connotation because
such a process is essentially transactional (Hua et al., 2015). Its synergistic and
accelerating interaction with hospitality and tourism has brought fundamental changes
to the industry (Buhalis and Law, 2008) and cultivated competitiveness in the business
environment (UNWTO, 2001). Consequently, E-commerce performance is referred to as
the business value impact of E-commerce (Zhu and Kraemer, 2002) that includes three
types of benefits:
(1) marketing and competition benefits;
(2) essential benefits that support strategy and development; and
(3) business efficiency benefits (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013).
Considering the complexity, ubiquity and criticality of E-commerce among B2B, B2C
and organization-facilitated C2C settings in the tourism and hospitality industry (Hua
et al., 2015), this study offers a review of 155 recent articles published both in
mainstream E-commerce literature and the hospitality and tourism field. Focused on
E-commerce performance, this study aims to further our understanding, identify
research gaps and suggest potential future study directions. It should be noted that,
although studies in hospitality and tourism have approached E-commerce performance
from many distinct perspectives, we have only managed to understand the nature and
impacts of E-commerce in a scattered and fragmented fashion; an integration approach
is thus much needed. Therefore, this study also attempts to synthesize extant empirical
studies of E-commerce performance and offer a coherent and informative framework of
IJCHM E-commerce performance, which should contribute to advancing knowledge
28,9 development and produce a significant long-term impact (Maclnnis, 2011).
2. Methodology
Because no study has systematically examined the topic of E-commerce performance in
2054 the mainstream and hospitality and tourism field, conducting a comprehensive and
pertinent review of the E-commerce performance literature requires the method of
theoretical sampling (Corbin and Strauss, 2008). In this case, articles related to
E-commerce performance are considered the sample, whose size is determined by the
point of “informational redundancy”. In other words, the article collection process will
stop when finding overlaps start to emerge from the articles repetitively and no new
information is anticipated (Lincoln and Cuba, 1985, p. 202). Such a point would suggest
that both information depth and breadth are achieved (Bowen, 2008), and a theoretical
framework governing E-commerce performance would emerge. Specifically, this study

followed the methodology by Greenhalgh et al. (2009) for the article sample collection
and used exploratory methods (browsing, asking colleagues) before the snowballing
technique (searching references of references and using citation-tracking databases
such as EBSCOhost (Hung and Law, 2011), ScienceDirect (Tsang and Hsu, 2011) and
ProQuest Business (Tsai et al., 2011). to identify key sources to uncover the E-commerce
performance themes and prior findings systematically (Greenhalgh et al., 2009) –
Greenhalgh and Peacock (2005) show snowballing techniques are more efficient than
both using formal search strategies to electronic databases and hand searching. The
article collection process started with four of the latest articles related to E-commerce
performance published in premium academic journals – Chae et al. (2014) in
Management Information Systems Quarterly (the impact factor for 2014: 5.311; five-year
impact factor: 8.490), Hua et al. (2015) in International Journal of Hospitality
Management (the impact factor for 2014: 1.939; five-year impact factor: 2.519), Law et al.
(2014) in International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (the impact
factor for 2014: 1.407; five-year impact factor: 1.963) and Yang et al. (2015) in Technology
Analysis and Strategic Management (the impact factor for 2014: 0.942; five-year impact
factor: 1.49) – and stopped at 155 articles when thematic saturation and finding overlaps
became obvious and a theoretical framework governing E-commerce performance
emerged. In addition, the following two criteria were applied to determine the 155
articles selected. First, only full-length research papers were included – this criterion
follows from the common belief that other scholarly works, such as research notes and
book reviews, tend to lack in originality and contribution to knowledge development
(Law et al., 2012). Second, the research paper under consideration needed to be related to
E-commerce performance as defined by Abou-Shouk et al. (2013), Hua et al. (2015) and
Zhu and Kraemer (2002).
The collected articles were then reviewed, organized, analyzed, synthesized and
evaluated to form clear and logical conclusions with regard to what is learned and yet to
be learned (Denyer and Tranfield, 2009). Specifically, abstracts of the selected articles
were first reviewed in a chronological order, which ensured deduction of idea evolution
trends over time (Mustak et al., 2013). Guided by abstract review insights, this study
then formed the article structural scheme, following the framework established by
Abou-Shouk et al. (2013) – each article collected was categorized under the three types of
E-commerce benefits:
(1) “marketing and competition benefits”; E-commerce
(2) “essential benefits that support strategy and development”; and performance
(3) “business efficiency benefits” (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013) for mainstream journals
and hospitality and tourism journals, respectively.
It is a common practice in the hospitality and tourism field to use “mainstream journals”
to refer to generic discipline-specific journals, such as Management Information 2055
Systems Quarterly, and to use “hospitality or tourism journals” to refer to journals that
are contextualized in hospitality and tourism. This categorization further facilitates
research gap identification, article synthesis and theoretical framework construction.
3. E-commence performance background

A temporal pattern emerged while researchers were closely examining the relationships
between E-commerce and firm performance. E-commerce in the 1990s appeared to have
offered advantages to firms with resource slack, exhibiting characteristics of utilizing
proprietary systems (Wang, 2010). For example, E-commerce facilitated by electronic
data interchange (EDI) created competitive advantages for those that employed it
(Mukhopadhyay et al., 1995). Santhanam and Hartono (2003) showed that EDI was
sustainable to a certain extent in a multi-industry context, suggesting firm IT
capabilities could improve performance (Bharadwaj, 2000). In addition, these
stand-alone and proprietary systems are often costly or difficult for firms to
communicate with their trading partners because of a lack in powerful communicating
platforms and constraints in data (Yang et al., 2015).
Facilitated by abundant IT support, significantly reduced costs and surging vendor
interests, E-commerce started to take center stage in the 2000s (Masli et al., 2011).
Particularly noteworthy was that the extensive standardization of IT tools (Wang, 2010)
and Web-based technologies, which offer two-way, real-time information exchange on
the value chain (Zhu 2004), offered opportunities for firms that were smaller and less
resourceful to compete with those that were bigger and more resourceful (Masli et al.,
2011). As a result, E-commerce induced large-scale transformations that were both
internal and external to an organization, exerting profound influence on both the
organization and its relationship with stakeholders (Carr, 2003).
3.1 Marketing and competition benefits of E-commerce

From a resource-based view (RBV), E-commerce capabilities can lead to performance
advantages (Nevo and Wade, 2010), such as differentiation or cost advantages
(Bharadwaj, 2000) because unique organizational capabilities can be derived from
proper resources utilization and allocation within a firm (Chae et al., 2014) with support
from other resources such as productive organization cultures (Bharadwaj, 2000).
However, firm capabilities are dynamic and continuously evolving to “adapt to rapidly
changing environments” (Elsenhardt and Martin, 2000; Teece et al., 1997), which led
researchers to a dynamic capabilities perspective (DCP) to understand how a firm gains
competitive advantages in today’s dynamic marketplaces (Chae et al., 2014). Superior
performance can result from a firm’s strong E-commerce orientation because such a firm
can be more agile to adapt to dynamic business environments (Sambamurthy et al.,
2003). However, this stream of research has built in an assumption that E-commerce will
bring the expected benefits and lead to competitive advantages, which appear at odds
IJCHM with the inconclusive results from recent empirical studies about the performance
28,9 impact of E-commerce (Chae et al., 2014) – not all E-commerce endeavors materialize into
resources that are “rare, inimitable, non-substitutable, and valuable” (RINV) and thus
create competitive edges and command economic rent (Barney, 1992; Amit and
Schoemaker, 1993). Consequently, skepticism started to arise as to whether
internet-based electronic businesses will continue to benefit from the economic impact of
2056 IT (Tallon and Kraemer, 2007; Zhu and Kraemer, 2002), and more general approaches
are called for to better understand potential benefits of E-commerce in the business
setting (Chathoth, 2007).
Several benefits of E-commerce that facilitate gaining a marketing and competitive
edge, however, have been documented. For example, E-commerce can ensure a stable
survival in the ever-changing and competitive business environment (Stansfield and
Grant, 2003). In particular, E-commerce can improve competitiveness of small and
medium enterprises (SMEs) because it can enable efficient collaboration (Kvainauskaite

et al., 2005). It is widely recognized that E-commerce, which leads to improved
organization image and reputation of SMEs in the global market (Ayeh, 2006;
Beckinsale and Levy, 2004; Collins et al., 2003; Kajogbola, 2004; Scarborough and
Zimmerer, 2003) and technology diffusion result in SMEs’ improved competitive
positions (Beatty et al., 2001; Daniel and Wilson, 2002; Kartiwi and MacGregor, 2007;
MacGregor, 2004).
Moreover, E-commerce can improve productivity and realize economies of scale,
leading to better operating efficiency and performance (Beekhuyzen et al., 2005;
Harindranath et al., 2008; Migiro and Ocholla, 2005; Simpson and Docherty, 2004). By
shortening response times to enquiries and by tracking and improving customer
satisfaction, E-commerce can lead to more repeat businesses and enhanced customer
loyalty (Dyerson and Harindranath, 2007; Quayle, 2002; Saffu and Walker, 2008; Teo
et al., 2009). An “e-competitive transformation” (Straub and Klein, 2001), if appropriately
used, can gain firms competitive advantage over both online and offline competitors
(Dyerson and Harindranath, 2007; Harindranath et al., 2008; Poon and Joseph, 2001).
3.2 Essential benefits of E-commerce that support strategy and development

From a strategic and development perspective, turning investment in E-commerce into
firm capabilities that can generate sustainable competitive advantages and
outperformance is playing an increasingly critical role for business organizations. On
the one hand, physical IT assets such as equipment and even some software are often
easily imitable and thus tend to bring only temporary outperformance (Teece et al.,
1997). On the other hand, the intangible IT assets and capabilities, once successfully
integrated in a business, can bring sustainable superior performance (Christensen and
Overdorf, 2000) because they are considered RINV resources, characterized by tacitness,
idiosyncrasy and often a long development time window (Dierickx and Cool, 1989), and
shielded by factors like social embeddedness and causal ambiguity from competition
imitation (Dierickx and Cool, 1989).
Therefore, studies in the business literature predominantly focus on adoption and
related issues (Wang et al., 2013). Particular attention was directed to strategic and
development implications that follow from E-commerce adoption. For example,
E-commerce adoption was shown to improve financial growth at both the top and
bottom lines of organizations (Karagozoglu and Lindell, 2004; Straub and Klein, 2001)
and enhance a firm’s capability to penetrate international markets through easy E-commerce
information access on a global scale (Jin, 2007; MacGregor, 2004; Zheng et al., 2004). By performance
improving communications with customers, E-commerce strengthens firms’ capability
of service customization (Pease and Rowe, 2005). By improving communications with
customers, suppliers and partners (Azam, 2007; Karanasios, 2008; Simpson and
Docherty, 2004) and efficient use of technology to serve customers, E-commerce leads to
customer satisfaction and loyalty (APEC, 1999), further advancing effective relationship 2057
building. In addition, because E-commerce technology provides support to
organizations with increased and easier access to information and knowledge,
E-commerce adoption can lead to improving decision-making processes and
management productivity (APEC, 1999), as well as better systems, frameworks and
methodologies, to make strategic and functional decisions (Grandon and Pearson, 2004;
Kajogbola, 2004).
In general, IT infrastructure and other physical IT assets, such as internet and

associated technologies, do not create value without being integrated with other
organizational resources (Mata et al., 1995), which are often difficult or costly to transfer
when combined (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993). Only by complementing tangible
technology assets, intangible IT assets such as human and business IT resources appear
to explain performance variances among companies (Siqueira and Fleury, 2011; Li et al.,
2014). Owning IT resources that best complement technology in attaining innovation
appears to be the most powerful way to create and secure sustainable competitive
advantages against competition imitation (Feeny and Willcocks, 1998). In the
E-commerce context, firms do not have the same E-commerce capabilities; even if they
do, they can benefit only from Web-based technologies that are integrated into
organizations and produce “sustainable resource complementarity” (Lederer et al., 2001;
Straub and Klein, 2001; Zhu, 2004).
3.3 Business efficiency benefits of E-commerce

Successful interaction between E-commerce and four intangible assets, i.e. “alignment of
E-commerce with business strategy, financial resources, user involvement, and external
relationship management” (Bharadwaj, 2000; Thong, 2001; Sauer and Willcocks, 2002;
Bruneel et al., 2012; Li et al., 2014; Yang et al., 2015), could result in outperformance
(Yang et al., 2015) because of increased business efficiency (Bharadwaj, 2000) and
barriers to imitation (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993).
Therefore, E-commerce can lead to operations and internal efficiency improvements
(Collins et al., 2003; Dyerson and Harindranath, 2007; Karanasios, 2008; Kuan and Chau,
2001; Teo et al., 2009), which result in better business performance (Jin, 2007; Poon and
Joseph, 2001) and improved supply chain efficiency (Quayle, 2002). A number of reasons
have been explored to understand business efficiency benefits of E-commerce. For
example, adopting E-commerce technology was cited to improve internal efficiency by
enabling better order processing, employment growth, inventory control, online staff
recruitment, accountability and staff satisfaction (Dyerson and Harindranath, 2007;
Harindranath et al., 2008; Kajogbola, 2004; Quayle, 2002), in addition to supporting
improved cooperative efficiency of supply chain management (Daniel and Wilson, 2002;
MacGregor, 2004; Saffu and Walker, 2008). In particular, E-commerce is recognized for
facilitating collaboration and planning among supply chain partners (Quayle, 2002).
Additional benefits of creating E-commerce technology capabilities include business
IJCHM knowledge enhancement (APEC, 1999; The e-Regions Trust, 2006), internal knowledge
28,9 sharing improvement (Daniel and Wilson, 2002) and online transaction execution
enhancement (Álvarez et al., 2009; Raymond, 2001), which includes both processes of
order taking and tracking (Ayeh, 2006; Wesrthner and Klein, 1999).
In short, E-commerce can be a resource that generates competitive value only when
combined with tacit, specific business resources and skills (Yang et al., 2015). The
2058 literature of its performance, as illustrated above, can be categorized into a
production-economics-based stream and a process-oriented stream (Barua and
Mukhopadhyay, 2000) – production functions are used in the first stream of research to
explore the input– output relationships driven by IT, and, in general, positive empirical
evidence was found between IT and productivity (Chan, 2000); performance analyses
are conducted in the second stream of research to examine the effects of investment on
intermediate operational performance, as well as financial performance at a higher level
(Barua and Mukhopadhyay, 2000).
4. E-commerce performance in hospitality and tourism

E-commerce evolved uniquely in the hospitality and tourism industry over time
(Gaffney, 2013). Early E-commerce practices started in the 1960s, when the
hospitality and tourism industry began to rely on global distribution systems
(Thakran and Verma, 2013). In particular, the programs of frequent flyers in the
1980s provided airlines with detailed customer information (Kim et al., 2009) and led
to successful customer relations management and relationship marketing, setting a
foundation for modern E-commerce (Chen et al., 2002). While the internet emergence
in the 1990s took E-commerce to a new level, where B2B and B2C relationships were
more interactive (Kim et al., 2009), the year of 2000 observed E-commerce stepping
into the SoLoMo era, where social, location and mobile played dominating roles
(Thakran and Verma, 2013). Starting from 2012 and featuring extensive consumer
behavior intermixing across purchase, channel and device alternatives (Thakran
and Verma, 2013), the hybrid era witnessed rapid evolvement of E-commerce into
the mobile commerce domain (Gaffney, 2013) and offered great opportunities of
research to complement prior studies that addressed technology progress and
marketing evolution (Berkus, 2013; Dev et al., 2010). For example, the majority of
hotel guests tend to bring at least two devices with them and consider paramount
the freedom to use their own devices and control their entertainment (Watkins,
2013). Some cruise lines and upscale hotels, such as Oceania and Kimpton, have
started to make iPads available for guest use and convenience (Hua et al., 2015).
4.1 Marketing and competition benefits of E-commerce

The resource-based view (Chae et al., 2014; Nevo and Wade, 2010) and the theory of
dynamic capabilities (Elsenhardt and Martin, 2000; Teece et al., 1997) appear to have
served as theoretical foundations for studies related to E-commerce performance in the
hospitality industry. Relationships describing E-commerce and hotel performance were
proposed (Chathoth, 2007); IT-mediated tasks and performance measures were tested,
but, similar to studies in the mainstream, were found to have inconclusive results. IT, for
instance, failed to exhibit a direct influence on company performance; however, firm
capabilities that take full advantage of informalization and networking lead to improved
performance (Sigala, 2003). When mediated by employee outcomes, E-commerce that
supports customer service was found to influence hotel performance (Cohen and Olsen, E-commerce
2013). Recently, Hua et al. (2015) found that E-commerce expenses in general influence performance
rooms’ revenue positively and significantly, although such expenses appear to have
distinct impacts across different chain scale types.
The theory of dynamic capabilities suggests that E-commerce can be considered as a
dynamic capability (Hua et al., 2015). Utilizing knowledge, routines, simple rules and
analytic processes to create customer value, organizations exhibit characteristics of 2059
dynamic capabilities, as they use appropriate E-commerce support to keep improving
their resource allocation and performance (Wheeler, 2002). Early examples can be found
in the tourism and hospitality industry in the 1960s when American Airlines developed
SABRE, a basic but automated E-commerce system, to improve data processing
efficiency of traveler bookings and data. SABRE grew quickly to serve over 10,000
travel agents all over the world and later on became the biggest private real-time
data-processing system at one time. SABRE Technology Group introduced

Travelocity.com in 1996 and created a new market featuring optimization of consumer
and inventory interaction and aggregation such as search and customization, changing
the landscape of E-commerce (Mamaghani, 2009). The current shift in guests’ increasing
use of mobile devices (Gaffney, 2013) also highlights some areas where dynamic
capabilities can be carefully developed in the mobile dimension, such as trip planning,
real-time information accessing, information sharing and problem solving (Wang et al.,
2012). Geo-based technology can significantly create differentiating features by offering
timely geographical information and associated services (Tussyadiah and Zach, 2012).
While technology advancement has brought into being virtual reality (VR), VR appears
unlikely to replace a real visit in the near future (Guttentag, 2010).
Understanding how people seek, process and use travel information in both online
and offline contexts can provide managers with benchmarking information to improve
effectiveness of online marketing strategies (Ho et al., 2012), particularly given
responses toward Web advertising were shown to positively impact website attitude,
which leads to improved attitudes about brands, and in turn to increased intentions to
purchase (Hwang et al., 2011). For example, Xiang and Gretzel (2010) studied the
appearance frequency of social media websites in travel-related information search
results, considering that social media is a critical source of travel information. They
found that a large proportion of search results on travel information came from social
media websites and that search engines have become increasingly sensitive to social
media content. Later on, Hays et al. (2013) showed that social media can function as a
marketing tool for destinations. In addition, given that online marketing effectiveness
positively influences tourism dominance (Woodside et al., 2011), websites play a critical
role in promoting destination image (Jeong et al., 2012). Furthermore, because both
internal and external factors are essential in determining use of electronic marketing
(El-Gohary, 2012), different approaches should be used to target potential customers to
improve marketing effectiveness in an online environment (Luna-Nevarez and Hyman,
2012) to improve E-commerce performance.
Online travel communities hosted by business organizations also appear to behave
as effective marketing platforms, as consumers’ intention to participate in such
communities was found to positively impact their intention to use and recommend
products of the host business organizations (Casaló et al., 2010). Consumers were found
to accept online purchasing, and perceived website control was shown to be positively
IJCHM related to purchase intention (Liang and Lim, 2011). In addition, online purchasing
28,9 intention appears to be positively related to user innovativeness and ease of transaction
process (San Martín and Herrero, 2012). Interestingly, taking souvenirs’ purchasing as
an example, it may be a good idea to complete a transaction the traditional way in a local
store before disclosing available online purchasing options, as purchase limitation
appears to increase initial purchase intent regardless of item type (Abendroth, 2011).
2060 Along the line of consumers’ repeat purchase and loyalty in online contexts, Kim et al.
(2013a, 2013b, 2013c) showed that navigation functionality, transaction security and
cost effectiveness significantly influence trust, which then positively affect intention to
repurchase online; Llach et al. (2013) offered empirical evidence that quality,
decomposed into the functional and hedonic quality, positively and significantly
influences loyalty through perceived value in an online purchasing context of the airline
industry. And more experience using E-commerce tools appears to positively affect
repurchase intention (Oh et al., 2009). Therefore, it appears that E-commerce platforms
that are user friendly, functional, easy and fun to use and safe can significantly improve
E-commerce performance. In particular, proper E-commerce decisions can result in
competitive advantages (Bilgihan et al., 2011).
4.2 Essential benefits of E-commerce that support strategy and development

Tracing a similar line of evolvement, hospitality and tourism studies on E-commerce are
predominantly IT adoption-oriented (Wang et al., 2013). Yet, academic attention has
been broadened to address institutional employment of IT (Herrero and San Martín,
2012; Kim et al., 2008, 2009), while keeping pace with the increasing number of industry
applications of E-commerce (Law et al., 2014).
IT adoption studies are critical in understanding how to improve E-commerce
performance, as they pinpoint areas of interest that tend to have significant strategic
implications and produce timely and practical improvements for business development.
For example, strengthening market position by maintaining good relationships with
current business partners and securing new ones is a widely recognized E-commerce
benefit (Kim, 2006). E-commerce has been shown to help SMEs in the tourism industry
with collecting and distributing information on a global scale; by offering easy
information access to tourism services and products, E-commerce was shown to
improve stakeholder relations (Bourgouin, 2002; Kim, 2006). Social media is often
considered as a critical source of information by international tourists to seek solutions
for a variety of problems (Schroeder et al. 2013). And guest-empowerment technologies
appear to be valuable for hotel room services, as shown by Schrier et al. (2010) that hotel
guests consider on-demand services the most attractive features.
In particular, understanding the determinants of IT adoption facilitates
organizations to optimize their choice of IT systems (Tarcan and Varol, 2010), which, in
turn, could lead to improved E-commerce performance. For instance, tourists who are
more familiar with the internet and exhibit high innovativeness tend to use podcast
tours in museums for an enhanced experience (Kang and Gretzel, 2012). Consumers in
restaurants are prepared to use biometric systems when they are perceived as useful and
secure (Morosan, 2011). Potential hotel guests tend to use mobile hotel reservation
services if they offer high information and system quality (Wang and Wang, 2010).
Because customers rely on E-commerce platforms to facilitate their decision-making
process (Law et al., 2014), websites focus on the needs of customers instead of those of E-commerce
investors (Escobar-Rodríguez and Carvajal-Trujillo, 2013). performance
Several studies tried to understand customer needs in an attempt to improve
E-commerce performance from an online textual content perspective and started to
explore potentials of text mining in the tourism and hospitality industry. For
example, positive online reviews (eWOM) were found to significantly improve
booking intention and trust (Sparks and Browning, 2011), intention to travel, tourist 2061
attitude and destination image (Jalilvand et al., 2012). A selection of keywords
appears to dominate destination image because tourists rely on these words as
anchors to find more destination information online (Pan and Li, 2011). In addition,
travel blogs were shown to convey information about bloggers’ travel expectations,
values and beliefs (Banyai and Havitz, 2013). Therefore, managers can analyze
online textural information to understand tourists’ thoughts and work closely with
identified online ambassadors (Rong et al., 2009) to form effective marketing

strategies. It was also shown that a price-network size schedule featuring reducing
price with increasing network size could work to attract potential customers to make
timely purchases (Xiong and Hu, 2010).
Studies addressing the relationship between tourism suppliers and intermediaries
are gaining momentum in the literature. For example, the loyalty of an airline’s
consumers and competition of its own business website with online travel agency (OTA)
platforms appear to determine whether the airline uses OTA platforms to sell tickets
(Koo et al., 2011). Online wholesalers are perceived in some regions of the USA as
partners of hotel operators, with acknowledged benefits including global distribution of
products and services and aggressive media advertising that increase hotel visibility
and exposure (Myung et al., 2009). And online communication was found to improve
online reservation and e-ticket procurement (Andreu et al., 2010). E-commerce
technology applications were also found to be critical in increasing loyalty and
satisfaction of customers when supplier and travel agencies are concerned (Ruiz-Molina
et al., 2010) and leading to improved organization image and reputation of SMEs in the
global market (Liao and Par, 2006). Note, though, that the distribution channel structure
is affected by the market structure during the process of restructuring caused by
E-commerce technologies (Berne et al., 2012). Of particular importance is that IT steering
committees in hotels appear to exert a significant and positive impact on IT integration
(Cobanoglu et al., 2013). In conjunction with the large number of benefits that
E-commerce can bring (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013), the committee is thus considered
strategically critical to hotel business success because of its influence in achieving IT
strategic goals and gaining a competitive edge over competition (Cobanoglu et al., 2013);
while, a recent study examined impacts of E-commerce benefits on E-commerce
adoption (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013), instead of focusing on E-commerce benefits as a
result of E-commerce adoption (Bigné-Alcañiz et al., 2009). Moreover, studies started to
look at how hotels assess E-commerce technology investment, and preliminary results
suggest that centrally managed hotels often utilize more assessment tools based on both
financial and nonfinancial information, such as net present value and technical
requirement fit, than do locally managed hotels (Karadag et al., 2009). In short,
E-commerce has started to play an increasingly more important and strategic role in
operating and strategic management (Law et al., 2014).
IJCHM 4.3 Business efficiency benefits of E-commerce
28,9 Business efficiency benefits derived from E-commerce can usually be classified into
external and internal benefits. For example, transaction cost reduction was proposed as
a potential internal benefit from using E-commerce technology in a hotel service
operation context – the internal benefit of transaction cost reduction was found to be
positive, yet statistically insignificant, suggesting resource lack in implementing
2062 E-commerce in the hotel industry (Chathoth and Law, 2011). Using biometric
technologies in the hospitality and tourism industry was found to offer potential
external benefits such as consumer convenience and increase operating efficiency and
security which are generally considered internal to a company (Mills et al., 2010). The
concern, though, is how to securely protect consumers’ biometric data because they are
critical private information (Mills et al., 2010). Community preferences can also be
influenced by E-commerce technologies such as an audience response system for
tourism development (Keske and Smutko, 2010). By facilitating collaboration and

planning among partners of supply chains (Quayle, 2002), E-commerce was shown to
lead to better performance for travel agencies (Heung, 2003). For SMEs, E-commerce
technology applications could lead to improved distribution channels and reduced
operation costs (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013)
Overall, E-commerce appears instrumental in increasing productivity and operating
efficiency, which in turn leads to the benefit of economies of scale (Buhalis, 2003;
Karanasios and Burgess, 2008). Furthermore, indirectly, marketing benefits derived
from E-commerce appear to also bring crucial benefits of operational efficiency, i.e. sales
increase and/or cost reduction (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013).
5. Discussions and research gaps of e-commerce performance in

hospitality and tourism
E-commerce is taking an increasingly more important role in serving as the
fundamental platform for all business transactions and non-business interactions
between all parties of interests – it provides critical support to all three domains of an
organization:
(1) the organization’s external market environment;
(2) the organization’s internal optimal performance; and
(3) flows between the organization and its market environment.
Understanding the key influencers of the performance of this fundamental platform and
its core dimensions, therefore, is critical for modern business survival and success.
Based on the findings of this study, the E-commerce performance framework can be
derived as follows in Figure 1. The key dimensions and influencers of E-commerce
performance are identified and relationships depicted. Specifically, E-commerce
performance was found to exhibit three key dimensions that encompass
competitiveness and marketing, strategic development and efficiency (Abou-Shouk
et al., 2013). It appears that E-commerce performance is influenced by market
E-commerce environment, organization E-commerce environment and the dynamic and
interactive relationships in between (Cohen and Olsen, 2013; Ho et al., 2012; Hua et al.,
2015; Law et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2013).
The market E-commerce environment, primarily the E-commerce infrastructure and
superstructure external to an organization that define, support and communicate
E-commerce
performance
2063
Figure 1.
The E-commerce
performance
framework
organizational needs and wants for optimal results and superior performance, is considered
as both stimulating and constraining the organization’s potential for innovation and better
performance. It encompasses suppliers, investors, IT developers, competitors, consumers
and other stakeholders (Carr, 2003) and bears heavy influence on E-commerce performance
by interacting with the organization through a variety of channels and means, such as the
fundamental supply-and-demand relationship between the organization and suppliers
(Wang, 2010), consumers (Gaffney, 2013) and competitors (Masli et al., 2011), asymmetrical
environmental and social responsibility concerns between the organization and investors
(Escobar-Rodríguez and Carvajal-Trujillo, 2013), and the balance of capital budget control
and innovation push between the organization and IT developers (Gaston and Botts, 2013).
The organization E-commerce environment, which supports information synthesis
into ideas and solutions to developing and/or existing problems and issues, is
considered as influencing organizational effectiveness in response to its market
environment. These include complex and dynamic interactions between organizational
core competencies (Lederer et al., 2001; Straub and Klein, 2001; Zhu, 2004), products and
services (Liang and Lim, 2011) and supporting tangible and intangible assets such as
internet and associated technologies (Mata et al., 1995), human and business IT
resources (Siqueira and Fleury, 2011; Li et al., 2014), dynamic capabilities developed in
the mobile dimension – e.g. trip planning, real-time information accessing, information
sharing and problem-solving (Wang et al., 2012) – and appropriate E-commerce support
to continuously improve their resource allocation and performance (Wheeler, 2002).
Opportunities and barriers to communication resulting from bordering internal and
external E-commerce environments between the organization and its market, given a set of
internal characteristics, can be both arousing and stifling the organization’s response.
Therefore, the market and organization E-commerce environments further interact and
deliver a separate, as well as combined influence upon E-commerce performance of an
organization (Carr, 2003; Cohen and Olsen, 2013; Escobar-Rodríguez and Carvajal-Trujillo,
IJCHM 2013; Gaffney, 2013; Ho et al., 2012; Hua et al., 2015; Law et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2013),
28,9 resulting in the dynamic model of E-commerce performance depicted in Figure 1.
Prior studies that addressed issues of E-commerce performance in the hospitality and
tourism field, although fragmented, have made significant contributions to the literature
by providing both theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence for key relationships
as depicted in Figure 1 (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013; Cohen and Olsen, 2013; Ho et al., 2012;
2064 Hua et al., 2015; Law et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2013). It is important to note, however, that
E-commerce-supported business interactions could significantly contribute to all three
aspects of E-commerce performance, i.e. competitiveness and marketing, strategic
development and efficiency, which, at the same time, are critical considerations for
business and strategic decisions to deploy E-commerce technologies and infrastructure
in the first place (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013).
Researchers in hospitality and tourism appear to have focused primarily on two
stakeholder groups when addressing issues and questions related to E-commerce

performance, i.e. consumers and the organization of interest (particularly, managers and
employees within the organization). Many other stakeholders received limited attention
and disproportionately much less research interest, for example, regulators, researchers,
media, environmentalists, suppliers and investors. This phenomenon appears to reflect
the early stage of E-commerce performance research in hospitality and tourism, as
consumers and the organization of interest tend to be the most obvious to focus on from
an academic perspective. Meanwhile, this phenomenon seems to also reflect the present
initial stage of E-commerce life cycle in hospitality and tourism, as organizations
typically have to prioritize their stakeholders when initiating strategic and significant
new endeavors to ensure those that are most impactful for organizational survival are
satisfied (Chua et al., 2005; Jawahar and McLaughlin, 2001).
Studies related to E-commerce performance in hospitality and tourism appear to
have focused primarily on social coordination (e.g. social media) and communication
aspects (e.g. web interface), with relatively little attention paid to transaction-based
services such as online payment. Issues of location- and situation-sensitivity appear to
be also understudied. In addition, likely due to novelty and the explosive speed of
popularity gains of mobile apps, only a few studies in hospitality and tourism focused on
services and products in the mobile app domain. Relative to the large number of
adoption studies, few studies explored E-commerce performance issues of using mobile
services. For example, in-store mobile services, such as the apps created to enhance and
support guest hotel experiences, have still not been well studied and understood from an
impact perspective.
Moreover, despite the surging interest in understanding the E-commerce
performance impact of OTAs (e.g. Priceline and Expedia), generic search engines (e.g.
Google and Bing) and social media platforms (e.g. Facebook and Twitter), studies in
hospitality and tourism appear to only slowly catch up with emphasis still placed upon
various versions of IT adoption frameworks and product attributes. The critical link
between these E-commerce platforms and performance is still missing or at best unclear.
For example, the recent cry from hoteliers about OTAs burdening hotel operation by
heavy commissions has drawn considerable attention (Hotel News Now, 2015); however,
the academic community has yet to offer a study explaining and tackling the underlying
mechanism and its intrinsic influence on performance.
Another research area that appears lacking significantly in hospitality and tourism E-commerce
concerns E-commerce-driven decision-making, which tends to bear significant direct performance
and indirect influence on performance. For example, even though the decision-making
context has shifted from quick and single-device-based to more integrated and
multiple-synchronized-device-based (Yadav and Pavlou, 2013), few studies in
hospitality and tourism have approached and addressed this area from either a
theoretical or empirical perspective. 2065
From a research design point of view, extant research related to E-commerce
performance in hospitality and tourism predominantly uses surveys to collect data;
relatively few studies are conducted by secondary data analysis or experimental design.
Two facts are noteworthy, however. On the one hand, the emergence and explosion of
Big Data provided much more powerful analytical possibilities than ever before. All
stakeholders of hospitality and tourism organizations can use Big Data to improve
predictions and decision-making processes. On the other hand, experimental design is

well known for its advantages on controlling for confounding effects and isolating
causality. Therefore, there appears to be more room for a diverse group of studies that
use different research designs/methodologies to address both theoretical and empirical
questions related to E-commerce performance.
6. Theoretical implications
Researchers have started to address the fundamental question of whether E-commerce
contributes to superior performance. For example, Kim et al. (2009) examined drivers of
individual E-commerce components, while Hua et al. (2015) tested the overall impact of
E-commerce on performance. It appears that the latest findings suggest that using
E-commerce for strategic purposes contributes to achieving long-term competitive
advantage; in particular, E-commerce appears to be instrumental in improving
customer satisfaction, managerial efficiency, marketing efficacy and financial
performance (Hua et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2009).
In addition, broader, as well as interdisciplinary, implications follow from studies of
E-commerce performance in IT, performance analysis, marketing and strategic
management, providing foundations for future studies examining consequences of
strategic choices. For example, Hua et al. (2015) made a contribution to the marketing
literature by specifically showing the manner in which combining various components
of marketing strategies to form an overall strategy can help organizations increase
revenue. On the other hand, specific manners in which E-commerce contributes to
performance were also revealed by recent studies, shedding light on superior
managerial decision-making possibilities. For example, even though system beliefs or
desire of control tend to drive E-commerce deployment (Cohen and Olsen, 2013),
E-commerce’s contribution to room revenue provides an opportunity for managers to
better understand potential benefits of E-commerce adoption and, consequently, to
make superior decisions (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013; Hua et al., 2015).
Further fundamental and theoretical questions will likely be explored based on the
proposed framework of E-commerce performance, identified research gaps and new
research directions. For example, different aspects of the framework (Figure 1) will
likely be brought under scrutiny to understand both their individual roles and mutual
relationships against the backdrop of improving E-commerce performance. Scholarly
endeavors on E-commerce performance have primarily focused on consumers and the
IJCHM organization(s) of interest in hospitality and tourism largely because E-commerce still
28,9 has a long way to reach its mature stage – maturity tends to be positively associated
with the resources that can be used to satisfy more stakeholders (Jawahar and
McLaughlinn, 2001). Along this line of reasoning, more studies will attempt to focus on
many other stakeholders, such as governments, activists, environmentalists,
technology acquisition specialists and venture capitalists, to understand their roles with
2066 regards to and impacts on E-commerce performance.
7. Practical implications
Driven by the need to create and maintain competitive advantages, E-commerce
business models have evolved over time to adapt to the dynamic market and to better
produce and implement E-commerce protocols within a “very competitive operating
environment” (Hua et al., 2015).
Because E-commerce has become a necessity (Hua et al., 2015), E-commerce

performance is critical to business survival and success. Web-based technologies and an
E-commerce environment have significantly transformed the competitive landscape in
the hospitality and tourism industry. With E-commerce’s global reach, companies can
target a potential customer market that covers the entire world. The non-stop
availability feature enables transaction opportunities 24/7 and offers unparalleled
business information at all levels (e.g. B2B, B2C and C2C levels) (Morosan, 2014). The
proportion of global population that has internet access continues to increase from 15
per cent in 2005 to 48 per cent in 2014 (Internet Live Stats, 2014), which, when properly
explored, could offer companies great opportunities to improve business efficiency in a
number of areas, such as customer engagement, acquisition, conversion and
E-commerce performance metrics, such as order value, order frequency, revenues per
visit and order predictability (Gaffney, 2013). Brand awareness, therefore, follows, and
online bookings could increase (Hua et al., 2015).
The criticality of E-commerce performance has led IT developers to see the need and
demand of offering extensive E-commerce services, such as search engine optimization,
social media, email marketing, paid search marketing and customizable reservation
systems (Gaston and Botts, 2013), which in turn create more opportunities and vehicles
for businesses to improve their performance. It has led businesses to form specialized
task forces to ensure execution and improvement of their E-commerce strategies (Hua
et al., 2015). For instance, by forming a dedicated E-commerce team at the global level,
Hilton Worldwide helps its properties to manage and improve their websites and
develops online performance analytics to ensure their strong online presence (Hilton,
2014). Marriott has also started an E-commerce global activation summit.
The essentiality of E-commerce performance has led businesses to focus on further
understanding E-commerce behaviors of customers (Hua et al., 2015), as they evolve
continuously with increasing complexity along dynamic changes of business models
and practices (Pan et al., 2013). For example, consumers used to prefer websites of large
online travel agencies with familiar brands, typically featuring ease of use, playfulness
and usefulness, around 2005 (Morosan and Jeong, 2008). But now they are using more
mobile devices (Gaffney, 2013) for inventory access through “metamediaries” (Gaston
and Botts, 2013), and paying particular attention to automation of services and devices
(SmartBrief Media Services, 2013). Moreover, consumer behaviors appear to show more
variations across different E-commerce platforms, exhibiting characteristics of deeper
fragmentation and a strong influence of search technologies on consumers’ E-commerce
decision-making process (Paraskevas et al., 2011). Therefore, businesses, as well as performance
scholars, in the tourism and hospitality industry should consider it critical to introduce
and assess E-commerce measures (Perlovich, 2013) while strategizing business
performance plans comprehensively (Boyd and Bilegan, 2003).
Last, but not least, the cohesive framework of E-commerce performance derived from
this study offers industry practitioners an opportunity to have a holistic understanding 2067
on determinants of E-commerce performance. In addition, the extensive content analysis
and synthesization update practitioners on current practices to improve E-commerce
performance. Findings of this study point industry practitioners to directions that can
lead to better E-commerce performance. For example, research on the mobile dimension
appears to have lagged behind the industry practices significantly in the hospitality and
tourism field. Potential directions to explore matching app interface and function, as
well as achieving competitive advantages by targeting niche markets, could also be of

great interests to practitioners.
8. Future research
Because of currently fragmented research on E-commerce performance in hospitality
and tourism, a stream of future research developing coherent themes and frameworks is
more likely to follow, particularly as E-commerce permeates businesses inside and out.
From an E-commerce performance perspective, studies are likely to explore the further
impact of relationships between all three domains of an organization:
(3) flows between the organization and its market environment.
More in-depth theoretical building and empirical tests are expected to focus on each of
these three domains as well.
As the E-commerce life cycle evolves past the initial stage and into maturity,
organizations will adapt and evolve accordingly and accumulate more resources to
satisfy more stakeholders (Jawahar and McLaughlin, 2001). As a result, scholarly
endeavors on E-commerce performance will also evolve from focusing primarily on
consumers and the organization(s) of interest to encompassing more constituents. For
example, in addressing issues and questions related to E-commerce performance,
corporate governance and market function can be further explored to seek answers to
questions related to criminals (e.g. unauthorized hacking to steal personal information
such as social security number), as well as competitors; E-commerce infrastructure can
be carefully examined to address and highlight the connection between researchers/
universities and the industry; and a variety of other themes such as acquisition,
evaluation and public governance can be assessed to uncover solutions challenging to
other parties of interest such as technology acquisition specialists, venture capitalists,
activists and governments (Chua et al., 2005).
More targeted and specialized studies will focus on specific aspects of E-commerce
performance with in-depth analyses, considering current studies in hospitality and
tourism tend to be exploratory within the context of certain service category, such as
mobile E-commerce, online marketing, online data services and social media marketing.
For example, social media integration into traditional distribution channels will
IJCHM continue to increase (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010). In particular, Facebook developed search
28,9 tools that double as a distribution channel, providing a natural context to further
understand how to improve E-commerce performance from marketing and revenue
management perspectives.
Study scopes will expand further beyond foundational themes of defining, describing
and exploring into modeling challenges and assessing determinants of E-commerce
2068 performance. Success criteria and evaluation systems would be critical issues to explore
in the future, considering the motto of what gets measured gets done. Particularly,
business models, systems and processes would draw more attention from both the
industry and academia, as they are potential drivers of E-commerce performance.
Although further examining outcomes of IT adoption will provide an important
complementary view and make a critical contribution to the literature on the
institutional adoption of IT (Hua et al., 2015), future studies will likely cover more
diverse topics far beyond adoption as E-commerce evolves to incorporate more

variations and dynamics in hospitality and tourism organizations and markets.
Research design is likely to be more diverse and inclusive moving forward on the
topics related to E-commerce performance in hospitality and tourism, evolving to
produce more studies based on secondary data analysis and experimental design.
Considering that Big Data has gained significant momentum because of its vast
information content, researchers are expected to discover more research interests
utilizing secondary data to test theories and develop new frameworks. At the same time,
given the advantages of confounding effects control and causality isolation and
identification, researchers are also likely to explore more experimental design
possibilities.
Mobile apps will come under extensive study in the years to come, as there appears to
be a significant gap between what is being used in the marketplace and what is under
research. This phenomenon is probably because of the explosive increase of mobile apps
in a very short time window, rendering many studies only “in progress”. Specialized
apps that target niche markets appear to form competitive advantages and deliver
better performance, such as TripAdvisor, Expedia and pPriceline, while branded apps
in hospitality and tourism appear to enjoy competitive advantages over non-branded
ones. More studies are likely emerging to further understand reasons beyond the
enhanced user experience from customized app interface and functions to match
services with the devices in hospitality and tourism.
The mixed findings of extant literature on E-commerce performance in hospitality
and tourism will be explored further, as such inconclusiveness could result from a
number of possibilities, such as inconsistent methodologies, diverse research variable
choices, measurement errors and lack of a uniform theoretical framework. In addition,
competing theories should also be further explored to understand impacts of
E-commerce against the specific backdrop of a study. For example, it would be
surprising to observe that the efforts exerted to developing “storefront websites or
mobile applications (apps)” often fail to improve consumer adoption that brings in
systematically more direct sales, without understanding that consumers may bypass
direct channels for relative benefits, such as ease of use and playfulness (Morosan and
Jeong, 2008). As a result, measurement issues of effectiveness and specific causes of
E-commerce performance need to be further addressed (Hua et al., 2015). Modeling
impact of E-commerce can also be extended into intangible dimensions to incorporate
more performance measures such as product or service quality, customer value-added E-commerce
and customer loyalty and to understand which intangible benefits manifest themselves performance
better from E-commerce infrastructure and superstructure. Further, E-commerce
orientation could be further explored, when confounding factors are controlled for, to
understand whether systematic company performance could follow (Hua et al., 2015).
Future studies will probably explore E-commerce performance further from an external
perspective, i.e. look into impacts of external markets and political environment, against 2069
a backdrop of potential industry differences.
9. Conclusion and limitations

Although much progress has been made in hospitality and tourism addressing
E-commerce performance, extant research remains fragmented, and many gaps need to
be bridged. By reviewing and synthesizing 155 recent articles, this study proposes a
framework of E-commerce performance to organize the complex literature
parsimoniously. The framework is structured around three major domains of an
organization:
(3) flows between the organization and its market environment, manifesting
intrinsic, dynamic and interactive relationships that affect E-commerce
performance.
The proposed framework was used to identify specific gaps in the literature and discuss
opportunities that lead to future research frameworks, theoretical developments and
emerging trends, in the hopes of advancing scholarship and practices in this
increasingly more important area of E-commerce performance in hospitality and
tourism.
Key contributions of this study, therefore, can be summarized in four aspects. First,
this study produced a cohesive framework of E-commerce performance based on an
extensive review of literature in both the mainstream and hospitality and tourism fields,
addressing the issue of currently fragmented understanding on E-commerce
performance in hospitality and tourism. Second, the proposed framework was used to
identify specific gaps in the literature and discuss opportunities that lead to future
research frameworks, theoretical developments and emerging trends in this
increasingly more important area of E-commerce performance in hospitality and
tourism. Third, the proposed framework would also shed light on industry practitioners
with regard to understanding determinants and being updated with current practices of
E-commerce performance. And fourth, the findings of this study point practitioners to
directions that can lead to better E-commerce performance.
Proper caution, though, should be exercised when interpreting findings of this
study because of the intrinsic limitations associated with articles of the literature
review nature – journal and publication selection, timing and relevance criteria and
the researcher’s decision and interpretation could affect the generality of review
papers.
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Corresponding author
Nan Hua can be contacted at: nan.hua@gmail.com
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International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

E-commerce performance in hospitality and tourism

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(Berkus, 2013), for example, is gaining momentum over traditional personal

framework governing E-commerce performance would emerge. Specifically, this study

3. E-commence performance background

3.1 Marketing and competition benefits of E-commerce

medium enterprises (SMEs) because it can enable efficient collaboration (Kvainauskaite

3.2 Essential benefits of E-commerce that support strategy and development

In general, IT infrastructure and other physical IT assets, such as internet and

3.3 Business efficiency benefits of E-commerce

(Barua and Mukhopadhyay, 2000).

4. E-commerce performance in hospitality and tourism

4.1 Marketing and competition benefits of E-commerce

data-processing system at one time. SABRE Technology Group introduced

4.2 Essential benefits of E-commerce that support strategy and development

identified online ambassadors (Rong et al., 2009) to form effective marketing

tourism development (Keske and Smutko, 2010). By facilitating collaboration and

5. Discussions and research gaps of e-commerce performance in

stakeholder groups when addressing issues and questions related to E-commerce

predictions and decision-making processes. On the other hand, experimental design is

Because E-commerce has become a necessity (Hua et al., 2015), E-commerce

well as achieving competitive advantages by targeting niche markets, could also be of

diverse topics far beyond adoption as E-commerce evolves to incorporate more

9. Conclusion and limitations

Management, Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 777-787.

Bryman, A. (Eds), The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Research Methods, SAGE

innovation, and exploitation-based innovation in SMEs”, Technology Analysis and

Industrial Marketing, Vol. 23 No. 6, pp. 395-404.

[Full Text] [PDF]

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