Title: Customer decision-making processes and motives for self-service technology usage in multi-channel hospitality environments

Authors: Petranka Kelly; Jennifer Lawlor; Michael Mulvey

Addresses: Dublin Institute of Technology, Sackville Place, Dublin 1, Ireland ' Dublin Institute of Technology, Sackville Place, Dublin 1, Ireland ' Dublin Institute of Technology, Sackville Place, Dublin 1, Ireland

Abstract: The contemporary hospitality service industry is changing with the introduction of new self-service technologies (SSTs) and their rapid adoption by customers. Examples of SSTs include hotel reservation websites, self check-in kiosks and mobile telephone service applications. The introduction of these electronic channels for communication with customers offers further opportunities for customer relationship management if customers choose to interact with them. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to understand the customer decision-making processes and underlying motivations for SST usage in multi-channel hospitality service environments. The data collection method employed was short qualitative interviews with 133 passengers at the departure area of an international airport. The findings contribute to an understanding of how and why customers use SSTs, which is critical from an eCRM perspective, in that many sectors of the hospitality industry may encourage or indeed require customers to use SSTs. As a result, this element of chosen/forced usage may have a huge impact on the user-company relationship.

Keywords: self-service technology; SST usage; hospitality customers; customer behaviour; customer relationship management; electronic CRM; multi-channel services; services marketing; decision making; motivation; hospitality services; hospitality industry; hotel reservation websites; self check-in kiosks; mobile phone apps; cell phone apps; mobile services; m-services; e-CRM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJECRM.2013.056491

International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management, 2013 Vol.7 No.2, pp.98 - 116

Published online: 30 Jun 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article