Purpose: The advancement of data analysis tools makes analyzing a huge amount of literature possible. This paper aims to identify tourism information technology research trends with the assistance of Toolkit for Academic Research (CATAR) to answer two research questions: the status of tourism information technology (IT) articles published in these selected journals from 1990 to 2016, and whether the number of Tourism IT articles is increasing or decreasing, and the main research topics studied in these articles from 1990 to 2016, and whether those have shifted over the 27 years. Design/methodology/approach: Selected keywords identified by researchers that were used to extract Tourism IT articles published in Web of Science database. CATAR was used to carry out two analyses, namely, overview analysis and breakdown analysis. Overview analysis is performed to apply citation analysis to identify the general trend and the most cited reference of Tourism IT research represented by the selected articles. Breakdown analysis is based on bibliographic coupling (BC) analysis. Findings: The number of Tourism IT publications grew rapidly in the second half of the 2000s, as mobile phones with touch screens became increasingly popular. It signals changes in the way of information searching behaviors. A total of 769 authors from 44 countries contributed to Tourism IT research. The USA, China, UK and Australia are the countries contributing the most. Six subject areas were revealed, namely, the interaction of people and organization; interaction of people and information; interaction of people and technology; technological implementation; the interaction of organization and information; and interaction of organization and technology. Research limitations/implications: The major limitation of this study must be considered – the use of data merely derived from WoS database. The BC analysis makes a comparison between references of the given articles. This analysis requires the citation sources with better data quality, which is mainly based on the accuracy and standardization of databases. WoS is the database currently fit this requirement. The emergence of the new citation tools will enable scholars to pull data from new databases and to clean the data. Incorporating data from those new databases will reveal more accurate and comprehensive picture of Tourism IT research trend. Originality/value: This paper revealed the research trend and major research subject areas of Tourism IT research for the past 16 years. The results can assist scholars to quickly grasp the Tourism IT research. This paper also provides an alternative approach to conduct literature review with computer-assisted analysis program.

Previous studies have investigated how customer purchase intention is influenced by live streaming. However, no study has investigated the effect of service marketing mix (7Ps) on consumer shopping behavior from sellers’ perspectives. The present study is designed to shed light on the relationships among the 7Ps and the customers’ purchase intention through watching the broadcasters’ show. An integrative marketing-oriented model is proposed and tested using data collected from 330 customers (including 237 shoppers for apparel and 93 customers for seafood) through Facebook live shopping platforms. The research results reveal that promotion, placement, and physical evidence have positive effects on customers’ purchase intention. In addition, the watching intention had a positive effect on purchase intention. It is also found that watching intention has a full mediation effect on the relationship between the 7Ps marketing mix and the purchase intention. The implications of the findings and issues for future research are also discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to present an integrated model for live streaming shopping (LSS) to examine the antecedents and consequences of consumers’ attitudes. Based on the stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) paradigm, this study investigates marketing stimuli effects within a live streaming commerce context on viewers’ cognitive and affective states by drawing from their unified knowledge of technology acceptance model (TAM), utilitarian gratification theory (UGT) and the theory of reasoned action (TRA) underpinnings and their subsequent responses. Data collected from 402 live streaming shoppers of several reputable retailers in Mainland China were used to empirically test the proposed framework via structural equation modelling. The theoretical framework found support for most hypothesized relationships. The research results confirm that the 7Ps marketing mix strategies as the stimuli factors positively influence the consumers’ cognitive and emotional states represented by perceived usefulness, perceived value, information gratification, entertainment gratification, and social interaction. These factors have been found to be the direct predictors of consumers’ attitudes toward LSS. Furthermore, consumers’ response in terms of their attitudes influences their intention to watch the show and subsequently affect their purchase intention. This paper bridges a gap in LSS studies, contributing to develop a more comprehensive framework and provide a better understanding of the factors that influence the the formation of consumers’ attitudes, and the influence of the formed attitudes on the intention to engage in LSS before actually making a purchase decision. The findings enable managers to determine how resources should be allocated to improve platform’s competence.

Tourists show an increasing interest in locally produced food items and bring them home as souvenirs. Despite a few discussions about food souvenirs, no research addresses how to evaluate the product quality from the consumer-based perceptual/evaluative perspective. In this study, the authors present a complete process for conceptualizing and operationalizing a formative second-order construct for food souvenir quality including a thorough literature review, one qualitative study and two quantitative studies. The model comprises nine dimensions: production specification, sensual appeals, packaging, word-of-mouth, price, brand, history/tradition, award/certification and food safety & health – measured by 16 formative indicators in total. Consumers identify dimensional indicators using paper-based surveys. Structural equation modelling examines linkages between the perceived quality and outcome measures (perceived value and purchase intention). Data collected from 611 consumers show that the resulting model performs well. The model also satisfies the criteria for evaluating formative indexes. Another sample consisting of 486 respondents cross-validates the findings. The study develops a robust measure across multiple food souvenir consumption contexts. The proposed model is an easy-to-use tool to assess the effect of quality dimensions/indicators and enables managers to determine how resources should be allocated to improve quality.

Most research in the field of customer engagement employs multi-item measures that are comceptualised as three-dimensional and reflective models. This leaves room to suggest an alternative approach for defining and operationalising the construct. From a behavioural standpoint, we propose a higher-order formative measurement model (FMM) underlying customer engagement behaviours (CEBs) in the context of Facebook fan pages. Data from 259 restaurant customers show that the FMM works well, both theoretically and empirically, and that CEBs include eight dimensions and 16 indices. We also apply text mining (TM) techniques to analyse customers’ Facebook posts. The findings indicate that some dimensions identified by the FMM could not be extracted using TM, and the TM analysis provided clues regarding the FMM indices; the two approaches complement rather than compete with each other. These results serve as a basis for scale development in future research, and provide guidelines for managers to enhance long-term customer relationships.

This study developed a comprehensive model of how smartphone users search for pre-trip tourism information. Important dimensions and relationships in tourism information search (TIS) behavior were studied in 21 subjects. The data collection process included semi-structured in-depth interviewing data and field observation data. The analysis revealed 10 activities characteristic of TIS behavior: internal searches, mobile searches, saving information in the smartphones, preliminary collaborative TIS, barriers to TIS, bringing mobile search to an end, summarizing information, PC Internet search, advanced collaborative TIS, and searches via editorial communications. Such data collection was not performed in isolation. Further, 20 propositions have been developed for future testing. The results suggest that pre-trip TIS appears to consist in a diversity of search patterns with the usage of multiple information sources; in addition, it is no longer individual but collaborative behavior in the context of Web 2.0. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of the research work are discussed, and directions for future work are suggested.