The Impact of Social Shopping and Customization Support on Students’ Intentions to Purchase Online Travel

Abstract

This paper investigates how e-Business can benefit from serving students with social decision and service customization support. We test whether the social richness of online shopping in pairs, connected by screen sharing technology, contributes to a greater intent to book vacation travel. Furthermore, we test the value of allowing for high customization. We conducted a controlled laboratory experiment and a field experiment with a total of 391 subjects. A Partial Least Squares analysis of Perceived Effectiveness, Perceived Enjoyment, Perceived Partner Quality, Opinion Seeker and Opinion Leader, combined to explain Intent to Purchase with high variance explained (61.6%). We found significant differences between high-customization and low-customization groups. The high-customization group had a lower intent to purchase, but with greater variance explained (73.7%). The low-customization group had greater intent to purchase, but with lesser variance explained (50.0%). The results shed light on the value proposition for offering social and customization support to students. Future research will extend the results to other populations, task domains and devices.