Uncovering Critical Success Factors for Business-to-Customer Electronic Commerce in Travel Agencies

ABSTRACT

Economic growth and information technology development has stimulated customer demand for foreign travel. In an intensely competitive and dynamic travel market, it is necessary for travel agencies to adopt innovative forms of information technology in order to survive and flourish. Travel executives are thus looking for an effective and efficient means to intelligently manage business-to-customer electronic commerce (B2C e-commerce) information technology applications in order to obtain and maintain sustainable competitive advantages. To this end, this study applies the multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) method to examine consumer adoption of e-commerce. The results show that the critical success factors are associated with product information (product context) and system security (system context)—such as product content, privacy policy, purchase procedure, and product pricing. It is anticipated that by focusing on these key drivers when creating their main marketing strategies, travel agencies will be able to develop and facilitate B2C e-commerce transactions.

Keywords:

• Critical success factors
• B2C e-commerce
• information technology adoption
• travel agency