This is the siteowner's dissertation for the MBA (Marketing) degree, which was supervised and marked as distinction by Professor Helga Drummond.  The research aims to study Taiwanese consumers’ concerns about online accommodation booking in order to gain a good understanding, and develop useful recommendations for marketers to attract potential customers and maintain existing customers.

The introduction to the research first takes an overview of the legislation and government action toward Taiwanese tourism market, followed by the examination of the current tourism market in Taiwan and the electronic market for Taiwanese international tourist hotels. Furthermore, the definition of purchasing decision-making is identified before the objectives and the benefit expectations of the research are introduced.  

In order to construct the conceptual framework, both the offline and online consumer purchasing decisions are considered. The literature review examines the external factors (i.e. the companies’ marketing mix and the sociocultural environments); the internal factors (i.e. learning; perception, and beliefs and attitude), and product knowledge and experience that would influence consumers’ offline purchasing decision, followed by the discussion of the previous studies that are relevant to electronic commerce.

The methodology first describes the empirical research, which was conducted within four international tourist hotels in Taiwan from 11th to 25th July 2003. The research is particularly focused on the Taiwanese domestic individual travelers so that the need for accommodation of the total valid sample of 269 respondents could be ensured. The second section describes the structure; the pre-testing; the validity, and the reliability of the research questionnaire. The third section identifies the four main statistical methods adopted by the research- Chi-square test; Factor analysis; Two independent sample T-test, and Simple one-way ANOVA.

Research analysis produced the statistical results of the research, and five factors influencing Taiwanese domestic travelers’ online hotel booking decisions are explored. These factors are ‘Ease of use of Internet’; ‘Stimulation of promotion’; ‘The needs for sufficient information’; ‘The confidence in transaction’, and ‘Familiarity and knowledge of Internet’. Furthermore, the results show a potential future growth for online Taiwanese domestic tourist market, and also indicate a tendency to book hotels online. In addition, a cautious online alternative-evaluation pattern and the stimulations to make Taiwanese domestic tourists book online are also explored.

Finally, the findings show a number of the examined consumer characteristics had direct impact on these factors, hence influence on consumers’ online hotel booking decisions. Therefore the recommendations are presented in three segments, notably: International tourist hotels, travel websites, and further research.