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ASCENT International Conference Proceedings - Accounting and Business Management (IJABM), 11-12 April 2013
ISBN : 978-967-11851-1-7 189
Room Internet Services (Ris) Attributes And Customer Purchase Intention
Rashid Salleh, Nur’Hidayah Che Ahmat, Salleh Mohd Radzi
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, UiTM, Shah Alam, Selangor
ABSTRACT
A recent survey supported the idea that technology especially internet become one of the basic necessity for a hotel guest. This finding has made most of the hoteliers become a risk taker by investing a bunch of money to provide internet services in the room. Unfortunately, some of the hotels have uninstalled their internet facilities in the room due to high maintenance and revenue losses. In conjunction with the crisis, this study aimed to investigate how the customer purchase intention relates with the room internet services attributes. Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) acts as the foundation of this study which influenced the relationship between the variables. The results of this study showed that all attributes of room internet services were positively related with customer intention to purchase and attention to purchase is the most influential attributes. Keywords: Room Internet Services (RIS), Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). Introduction
Information technology has a rapid change in hospitality industry since the millennium. The younger generation become more vigilant to the change of technology that affect directly to hospitality industry competitiveness strategy. The benefit of technology to an organization is vast and some of the benefits are low cost distribution chain, improved customer service, enhance quality of service and reduce the cost in long term (Maryam & Mahmood, 2009). Hotel information and communication technology (ICT) can be set into some group according to hotel operation such as room division ICT, food and beverage ICT, general and back office ICT, and in-room ICT (Sigala, 2003; Ham, Kim & Jeong, 2005). It is worth mentioning that room internet services (RIS) is one of the most important service or amenities needed by hotel customers (Cobanoglu, 2001; Bilgihan, 2009; Berezina & Cobanoglu 2010). With the important of RIS, American Hotel and Lodging Association (AH&LA) 2010 Lodging Survey revealed wireless internet access show an increase from 91 per cent in 2008 to 94 per cent in 2010. In line with that, the government of Malaysia take a positive step to enhance the uses of ICT among all Malaysian and many hospitality organizations convert their corporate structure to include functions and positions that take care of their technology.
Even though Malaysia government encourage the usage of ICT but the cost to install the ICT service was still exorbitant. Telekom Malaysia Network exposed the charges of wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) for one modem is between RM148 to RM428 per month depending on the speed. Nevertheless, a recent study by Colliers PKF Survey in 2010 posted that the internet charges, fax charges and hotel phone calls revenue has decline from USD1, 274 per available room in 2000 to only USD178 in 2009 worldwide. Somehow, the declining will not just jeopardize the operation and strategic planning of the hotel, but also the company’s profit. When the revenue is declining too much until it cannot cover the monthly expenses to maintain RIS, the hotel will cut off the service and that will affect the customer satisfaction especially the business travellers who needed this internet services. Therefore, this study intent to investigate factors that influence customer behavioural intention to purchase the RIS. By studying the gaps, it will help the hotel operators to make the right decision at the right time and to the right type of customers regarding this RIS.
ASCENT International Conference Proceedings - Accounting and Business Management (IJABM), 11-12 April 2013
ISBN : 978-967-11851-1-7 190
Literature Review
It is important for the hotel operators to meet up the customer requirements, expectations and demands. Research discovered 70 per cent of customers are still depending on the core criteria (price, location, room) when selecting a hotel while another 30 per cent are looking into customization options, loyalty program and technology offered but then surprisingly technology options weight about 10 per cent of overall travellers’ selection of hotel (Verma, Plashka, Dev &Verma, 2002). To further explain, Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) was used to identify and forecast human behaviour and TPB is an expansion of Theory of Reason Action (TRA) by Ajzen and Fishbein (1980). In predicting the human behaviour, TPB will look into three elements which are attitude to purchase (ATP), subjective norm (SN) and behavioural control (BC). Ajzen (1985) defined ATP as self-estimation on favourable or unfavourable to perform the actions. He added that persons are more probably to accept a certain manners if he or she has a positive mind-set toward undertaking the manners. Meanwhile, Subjective norm are the extent to which a person react to social pressure to carry out the particular behaviour (Ajzen, 1985). It means the more a person thinks he should involve in the behaviour, the greater the individual’s level of motivation to comply with others. Behavioural control reflects the direct opinion on inner and outer restriction for a particular behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) and those who get a higher degree of personal control tend to have a stronger intention to engage in certain behaviour. Further, Ajzen (1991) explained that behaviour intention is factor that determines how rigid people are willing to execute behaviour.
In addition, past scholars found out that ATP was closely related with the positive attitude (Teo, 2009; Timothy & Chwee, 2010; Tan & Teo, 2000) which directly lead to positive relationship for attitude to purchase. On the other hand, if the studied population are more obedient to the religious and culture, they tend to follow the social pressure or the norms of the area and this will lead to a positive relationship between subjective norms and behavioural intention (Nor & Pearson, 2008). Other than that, behavioural control reflects the direct opinion on inner and outer restriction of a person to perform a particular behaviour and these aligned with skill and knowledge of the respondents regarding the studied items. Marcelline and Subhash (2005) proved through their study where the sample population were students in India with internet literacy thus leads to positive score in behavioural control. The score also show the positive relationship between behavioural control and behavioural intention. Methodology This descriptive cross-sectional study explained the relationship between the variables tested. The study developed a structured questionnaire adapted from previous literatures. A non-probability sampling was used where hotels’ customers or in-house guests throughout Penang areas were selected to participate in this study. Based on Krejcie and Morgan (1970) 377 samples are adequate for rigorous analysis and the surveys were distributed by using convenience sampling method. The instrument was divided into three sections measuring independent variables, dependent variable and demographic profiles (Ajzen, 1991; Geroge, 2004) and independent variables are further divided into three attributes which are ATP, SN and BC. All items were measured by using five-point Likert-Scale ranging from (1) “Strongly Disagree” to (5) “Strongly Agree”. The instrument has been tested using Croanbach Alpha for the reliability of the survey. The data collection took three months from Dec 2011 until February 2012. In light with the positive feedback, 248 questionnaires were received and good responses were gathered with the absence of any serious problem with the instrument and the process. The data were coded and keyed in Social Statistical Package (SPSS). The reliability test was then undertaken for every section separately. The result showed that the instrument and items used was reliable with coefficient alpha value at 0.892 for ATP, 0.878 for SN and 0.737 for BC. Analyses And Results Respondent’s Profiles
From the descriptive statistics, 51 per cent (n=127) were male compared to 49 per cent (n=121) females, proved the survey was almost fairly distributed between both genders. Furthermore, majority of the respondents were between 18 to 40 years old with 44 per cent (n=109) for 18-30 years
ASCENT International Conference Proceedings - Accounting and Business Management (IJABM), 11-12 April 2013
ISBN : 978-967-11851-1-7 191
old and 45 per cent (n=111) for 31-40 years old. Additionally, half of the respondents have their Master and PhD (n=118), 37 per cent (n=93) with Bachelor Degree, 14 per cent (n=35) with Diploma and others were SPM holders. These reflected the level of knowledge among respondents with computer savvy and afford to stay in hotel and pay RIS charges. Also, most of the respondents are currently working in service industry with 55 per cent (n=136), another 27 per cent (n=67) working in hospitality industry, 9 per cent (n=23) working in retail, 7 per cent (n=17) working in manufacturing while 2 per cent (n=5) are jobless. Measuring the Relationship between Room Internet Services (RIS) Attributes and Customer Intention to Purchase
SN ATP BC
SN
Pearson Correlation
1 .664*
* .429**
Sig. (2-tailed)
.000 .000
ATP
Pearson Correlation
.664*
* 1 .656**
Sig. (2-tailed)
.000 .000
BC
Pearson Correlation
.429*
* .656*
* 1
Sig. (2-tailed)
.000 .000
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). N = 248
Table 1: Correlations Analysis for Independent Variables
A correlation analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between the variables. Based on the output (Table 1), there is a significance correlation between all variables (sig.value = 0.000 < 0.01). This further supported by a strong positive correlation between subjective norms and attitude to purchase, r (248) = 0.664. For attitude to purchase and behavioural control, the correlation was also a strong positive value (r = 0.656). Whereby for behavioural control and subjective norms the correlation value was moderately positive with r (248) = 0.429. Generally, it can be wrapped up that every element was positively related to one another. These results were associated with previous literatures (Suh & Han, 2002; Celik, 2008; Nor & Pearson, 2008).
Model R R
Square
Adjusted R
Square
Std. Error of
the Estimat
e
1 .722a .521 .515 3.52000
a. Predictors: (Constant), BC, SN, ATP b. Dependent Variable: ITP
Table 2: Multiple Regression Results
Table 2 tabulated all independent variables (BC, SN & ATP) as a predictor explained 52.1 per cent of the variation in intention to purchase RIS. This result also indicates that the independent variables have a strong, positive, linear relationship with dependent variables with R = 0.722.
Customer Intention to Purchase
ASCENT International Conference Proceedings - Accounting and Business Management (IJABM), 11-12 April 2013
ISBN : 978-967-11851-1-7 192
Independent Variable (IV)
Dependent Variable (DV)
Intention to Purchase
Beta
Coefficients Significance
Levels
Subjective Norms (SN) 0.01 0.984
Attention to Purchase (ATP)
0.498 0.000
Behavioural Control (BC) 0.289 0.000
R² 0.521
Adjusted R² 0.515
F 88.430
Table 3: Analysis of the Relationship between Room Internet Services (RIS) and
Moreover, among the three independent variables, only two variables make significant contribution to the equation as shown in Table 3. In this case, ATP has the largest beta coefficients of 0.498 followed by BC (0.289). Both attributes make a statistically significant contribution to the equation with significance levels of 0.000 as discussed by Pallant (2007). For SN, beta coefficient showed a weakest value of 0.01 with significant value of 0.984 which shows that this attributes did not produce a significant contribution to the prediction of ITP (dependent variables). Discussion and Conclusion
The data analyses and results were fully supported and it is proven that there are relationships between independent variables with the intention to purchase RIS. The results are likely spoken at the same tone with past researchers. Most of the customers have an intention to purchase room internet services based on their own judgment and usually people with positive mind set will eventually agree to things that gives benefit to them. Besides, an internet savvy customer will use their experience using the internet before they make a decision whether to purchase the RIS or not. This further supported the current survey done by International Telecommunication Union (2010) where they found that one over four people was internet user in 2009 and the figure surely increase due to rapid development of technology.
Thus, it is undeniable that internet has become one of the basic necessities in most of the developed countries. Internet comforts our daily life not only for our personal used but also for working purposes. In the same way, Malaysia citizen is among the highest percentages of people with long hours per day spent on social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs and this further strengthen the rationale of having RIS in each and every room in the hotels. Not to mentioned, the increasing number of online stores such E-bay, Mudah.com, Zalora.com also confirmed that people start to harvests the internet benefit for their works. Therefore, hotel operators are recommended to install the internet in their establishments in order to fulfil the customer basic needs. Even though this internet set up is expensive, but the implementation will soon become common among all hotel after weighing the pros of having the internet and the long term profitability. However, other factors such as budget, location, availability also need to be taken into consideration before the implementation as this investment needs a big amount of money. All in all, while this study emphasized on the relationships of three attributes on customer intention to purchase, there are still number of areas that need further investigation. To date, no attempt made to look into other in-room facility provided by hotel such as in-room entertainment. Also, since this study only focused on in-room internet (RIS), hence it is recommended to evaluate the level of customer satisfaction towards the installation of internet in other areas inside the hotel like at the lobby and dining areas.
ASCENT International Conference Proceedings - Accounting and Business Management (IJABM), 11-12 April 2013
ISBN : 978-967-11851-1-7 193
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