The effect of information quality from online-to-offline-based mobile shopping applications on brand reputation of applications through the information systems success model with perceived privacy protection

Authors
Yazdan Shirmohammadi 1
Qasem Aryafard 2
1 Associate Professor Payam Noor University, Tehran, Iran
2 Master of Tourism Management, Payam Noor University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract


purpose: The mobile application market is expanding rapidly. Furthermore, a new form of online-to-offline services available in mobile shopping apps, which help users instantly search for what they want online, try them on in nearby offline stores, and pay online, increasingly becomes popular. As technology is developing rapidly and the smartphone has become an essential part of our daily life, the smartphone is a versatile tool that can perform many functions. Shopping also changes its process from offline to online and is based on mobile. With the increase in the use of the Internet from smartphones, most of the Internet consumption is done through smartphones and not through personal computers as in the past (Kim et al., 2021). In recent years, online to offline has emerged as a new e-commerce model that differs from traditional e-commerce models. In this model, consumers can obtain information, access products through an online channel, and then consume them in offline stores. The rapid development of the online to offline model has led to the rise of online tourism platforms. Some tour operators choose to cooperate with online tourism platforms to sell tourism products with the aim of expanding market demand. In the case of the online-to-offline tourism supply chain, the tourism platform sells its product online and the tour operator provides the service offline. Through division of labor and cooperation, both of them can focus on applying their respective advantages to achieve a win-win situation. With the online-to-offline tourism model, consumers can book tourism products through an online platform anytime, anywhere. Before making a final decision, consumers often review the information displayed on the web page of online tourism platforms, especially the available reviews (Luca and Zervas, 2016, as cited in Zhou et al., 2022). Tourists can gather online information about price, service level, and product quality to make better purchase decisions. This has created many opportunities as well as severe challenges for the survival and growth of tourism-related companies (He et al.,2019). Companies providing online to offline services recognize smartphones as a useful communication channel for strategic marketing, and therefore they are willing to use smartphones to provide various services and types of information directly to customers and constantly reflect their needs (Fuentes & Svingstedt, 2017). Since the online platform is data controlled, so that the information is asymmetric, there will be problems such as fake reviews, rating fraud, false advertising, etc. This phenomenon puts consumers in an unfavorable information situation. According to the "Online Tourism Consumption Trend Report and Consumer Rights Protection Trend Report (2019)", the problems of online tourism platforms are mainly focused on ten aspects, including information leakage, false advertising, tourism products with big data analysis to harm Existing consumer income and data fraud investigation (Zhou et al., 2022). These problems not only affect consumers' tourism experience and reduce consumer satisfaction, but also damage the credibility of the tourism platform and weaken consumers' trust in the platform. Therefore, privacy protection is an important problem in this field. Since online to offline applications in tourism is an emerging and practical issue, it is very important to investigate this issue in our country. Previous studies have largely ignored service quality evaluation and decision-making by traditional travel agencies, hotels, and airlines. Although the importance of service quality in tourism firm development has been demonstrated by some researchers, few have studied the benefits of service quality from online tourism supply chains to offline hospitality and tourism fields for tourists. Also, in the researcher's point of view, the features of mobile shopping applications that are based on online to offline services are questionable as to what features affect the delight and satisfaction of tourists and lead to the brand's reputation. Meanwhile, the influence of the information quality (including the intrinsic information quality and the textual information quality) and the services quality (including the convenient services quality and the accessible services quality) perceived from online to offline mobile shopping applications on the delight of tourists and the reputation of the tourism brand is questionable. The researcher thought that it was not investigated in the previous research and the researcher investigated these issues in this research.

Methodology:Considering that tourism and hotel businesses can easily use online to offline tourism platforms by applying the results of this research to have satisfied and loyal customers, this research is applied in terms of purpose. On the other hand, in this research, the type of relationship and the degree of influence of the variables were described, so the method of doing the work is descriptive and correlational. In fact, the impact of information and service quality on privacy protection, delight, and reputation of tourism brands in mobile shopping applications based on online to offline (O2O) is investigated. A quantitative method was also used to collect data. The statistical population of this research is European tourists who traveled to Iran. Since the target population is unlimited and its exact size is not available, according to Cochran's formula for the unlimited population, 384 people are considered for the sample size. The convenient non-randomly sampling method is a suitable method for sampling. The collection of information takes place in two stages: library and field. By referring to reliable databases, the researcher examines scientific articles, books, dissertations, and theses to prepare the theoretical foundations of his subject. Then, a questionnaire is used to collect the data required by the researcher in the field and survey method. The questionnaire was made by the researcher. The questionnaire includes five demographic questions (gender, age, marital status, education, employment status). 39 items were designed to answer the research questions, which are analyzed with a Likert scale. In the inferential findings section, the pairwise relationships of the variables were evaluated with Pearson correlation test and the conceptual model of the research was tested with structural equation modeling test with AMOS software. Also, mediation relationships were tested using the Sobel method.

Findings: The online-to-offline service platform channels provide tourists with innovative tools to get service information, order travel package online (via apps) and check-in offline almost instantly. The main purpose of this research is to discover the effect of information quality (including intrinsic information quality and contextual information quality) and service quality (including convenient service quality and accessible service quality) perceived from online to offline based mobile shopping applications with perceived privacy protection on the delight of tourists and the reputation of the tourism brand. The findings indicated that the information quality (including the intrinsic information quality and the textual information quality) and the quality of services (including the convenient services quality and the accessible services quality) perceived from online to offline mobile shopping applications with the protection of privacy perceived on the delight of tourists and tourism brand reputation is effective and all hypotheses were confirmed.

Conclusion:In today's world, searching for information online is very important and common for tourists to make decisions. In recent years, online to offline has been used as a new e-commerce model. This research shows that all dimensions of a mobile phone shopping application, such as the information and services quality provided, privacy protection, are effective on delight of tourists and ultimately the brand's reputation. In fact, considering the wide importance of information needed by tourists, the validity of this information, considering the quality of intrinsic and textual information in applications is very important and effective. On the other hand, the quality of the services provided in these types of applications, easier access and their appropriateness are also factors that should be considered in this type of shopping applications. On the other hand, the higher the quality of information and services, the more the privacy of people in the online world is preserved and the delight of tourists increases. This delight of tourists also improves and increases the reputation of the attitudinal and behavioral brand.

This study investigates the impact of information quality including (intrinsic information quality and contextual information quality) and service quality (including the intrinsic information quality and the textual information quality) perceived from online to offline mobile shopping applications on delight of tourists and the behavioral and attitudinal reputation of the tourism brand. For this reason, the research model of Kim et al. (2021) is used, which was added to it with the researcher's innovation of the brand reputation variable. The results showed that the information quality intrinsic information quality and contextual information quality) and service quality (including the intrinsic information quality and the textual information quality) perceived from online to offline mobile shopping applications are effective on the delight of tourists and the behavioral and attitudinal reputation of the tourism brand. This research concludes that the quality of information provided in mobile shopping applications is important for tourists, especially European tourists in Iran. The quality of intrinsic information and the quality of textual information significantly affect tourists' perception of information quality, and this quality of information has an effect on the delight of tourist. Therefore, tourism industry managers should describe their products and services with detailed and accurate information. When providing it in mobile shopping applications, such as online-to-offline platforms, since the accuracy of information is a key feature of inherent information quality, practitioners in this industry must also thoroughly ensure that the data provided is up-to-date and reflect consumption transactions. Also, the results showed that convenience and high accessibility positively increase the perceived service quality of online to offline platforms. Based on this, tourism industry managers should create easier access for services. In particular, since new phone models are released frequently nowadays, mobile shopping applications must have compatible payment systems to remove barriers to tourists' purchases. Therefore, according to the available results, it is only in this case that mobile shopping applications can have high accessibility and convenience to affect the quality of mobile shopping application services. Another thing that was investigated in this research was the protection of privacy. The results show that privacy protection is a very important factor in creating the delight of tourists, this issue is observed in all the countries of the world that have achieved the technology of mobile shopping applications. Unfortunately, today, some technological advances endanger their privacy from the point of view of customers. For example, CCTV cameras, which are in most tourist places and should protect the safety of tourists, can violate their privacy, or artificial intelligence, which has many capabilities, in the view of some people, spies on their information and violates their privacy rights. Therefore, in the researcher's point of view, despite this level of concern in the world, tourists in our country also have concerns about privacy and take into account the care of their privacy when evaluating the quality of online services. As discussed in this study, managers should be confident that their security systems do not violate tourists' privacy to directly contribute to delight of tourist and brand reputation. Based on the results, it can be suggested that high-quality information helps customers who want to effectively find information on a specific topic and helps customers avoid unnecessary efforts to process useless information. Therefore, providing high-quality information can increase the delight of tourist. Tourism booking and review websites need to improve their entertainment element and create a more interactive and interesting experience for those browsing them. The information provided by the websites must be useful and up-to-date, match the needs of the user and provide links to other websites relevant to these users. By informing tourists about developments, sales plans, product updates and any other content they may find interesting and relevant, it helps to improve delight of tourists and ultimately brand reputation. Also, when tourists have a problem, they can be assured that they can talk to a genuine, caring and ideal person in person or on the phone. Even in the digital world, people like to connect with others. Since this research has a new topic in the field of technology in tourism, the researcher recommends that in future researches, this topic should be investigated with other statistical communities such as local tourists, international tourists, specific hotel guests and other sectors.
Keywords
Mobile shopping application
Brand reputation
Information Systems
European tourists
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Human and Information Interaction
Volume 10, Issue 3
Autumn 2023
Pages 58-76