Cruise Travel Virtual Communities: Digital Identity Management and Member Satisfaction

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1 Cruise Travel Virtual Communities: Digital Identity Management and Member Satisfaction Svetlana Stepchenkova a, Juline E. Mills a a Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management Purdue University, U.S. {svetlana, millsje}@purdue.edu Abstract Virtual communities are emerging as an effective marketing tool with increasing number of technologies supporting online communications and transactions. To realize its marketing potential, virtual travel communities (VTCs) have to provide the service benefits sought by community members in the VTC online environment. This is a challenging task, since multiple factors, social, psychological, and technology used, contribute to members satisfaction with VTCs. This research tests a model of members satisfaction with digital identity management in cruise travel virtual communities as higher perceived risks virtual travel environments. Keywords: Virtual Travel Community (VTC); Digital Identity; Digital Identity Management (DIM); Satisfaction; Cruise Travel. 1 Problem Definition Virtual communities (VCs) have revolutionized the way people interact and have important marketing implications as a viable business model. VCs make it easier for people to obtain information, maintain connections, develop relationships and, eventually, make financial transactions online. The travel industry, one of the first industries to go online, has long recognized the potential of virtual travel communities (VTCs) for destination and product promotion. Effectively designed and managed VTCs contribute to stronger customer satisfaction, which can result in higher spending on products and services offered by a VTC organizer, customer retention, and decrease in promotional costs, providing economic gains to both VTC organizers and members (Kozinets, 1998; Rothaermel & Sugiyama, 2001). However, the successful operation of a VTC requires a comprehensive understanding of what brings people to VTCs in the first place, what their underlying needs are, what social laws govern members conduct, and what technology a particular VTC should implement to support its functions (Wang et al. 2002). Up to date, little research has been done to

2 explore social and psychological responses of end users toward digital identities management (DIM) in VTCs. 1.1 Digital Identity Management (DIM) in VCs The information society has significantly extended the concept of human identity and created new challenges for designers of online environments. While identity and the issues associated with it, such as identification, reliability of the information, privacy, and identity theft existed long before the digital information age, many physical world solutions to these problems do not work in online environments (Pato, 2003). In VC environments the participants are usually registered as members (they provide their user name and password to be authenticated and login to the system), and are visible to other members via a pseudonym, or account name, that they have chosen. If they desire, the users can also display their age, gender, interests, and other information that can be relevant to the purpose of the community in their profiles. This declared information forms a user s explicit digital identity, which, by the very nature of VCs, can be real or fake (Nabeth, 1999). However, user postings provide a chance for viewers to get a sense of the writer s voice and to see how he/she interacts with others in that online environment, making possible inferences as to their implicit identity. Implicit aspect of digital identity is also reflected by the network of relationships that members build with others over time, the attitudes reflected in their posts, and the social status that people develop in VCs (Preece, 2000). The latter indicates the involvement of a particular member in with the VC, i.e., time and energy spent in moderating posts, answering questions, or maintaining FAQs (Donath, 1999). All these cues combined are helpful in constructing a person s implicit identity which can be further compared against the stated explicit identity in order to construct a more complex digital identity of a particular user (Claub & Kohntopp, 2001). Successful online communications require that VC members have the ability to manage the nature and amount of personal information they release about themselves (Boyd, 2002). Giving people both awareness and control over how they are presenting themselves online is a challenging technology task, thus, the need for effective digital identity management (DIM) systems which should be implemented in VCs becomes critical. An effective DIM system enables interactions and security of financial transactions, as well as the exchange of private and sensitive information among people, companies, service providers, organizations, and government institutions via the Internet. From a technology point of view, DIM refers to the management of user identities and the resources that person has access to in an organization. Specifically, DIM represents a category of interrelated solutions that are employed to administer end user authentication, access rights and restrictions, account profiles, passwords, and other attributes that provide a person with more control over his identity information (Pato, 2003).

3 1.2 Satisfaction Customer satisfaction is viewed by scholars as a principal factor to the success of organizational profitability (Anderson & Srinivasan, 2003). Satisfaction is best understood as ongoing comparative evaluations of what was expected prior to the consumption experience and the actual level of product/service acquisition (Oliver, 1997). Research on the loyalty of Internet retail customers placed e-satisfaction as central to understanding intended behaviour of Internet-channel customers (Winer, 2001; Mills & Morrison, 2003). Consumer satisfaction in an online environment is viewed as an important predictor of customer loyalty, which, in turn, leads to a firm s successful performance and economic vitality (Winer, 2001; Anderson & Srinivasan, 2003). Extending Oliver s (1997) definition to the VC context, end users satisfaction can be termed as an evaluative response to the overall performance of the virtual community. While the expectancy-disconfirmation theory considers satisfaction as primarily a cognitive process, a number of studies indicate that not only expectations and overall judgments but also affective evaluations contribute considerably to customer satisfaction response (Westbrook & Oliver, 1991). In this research the expectancy-disconfirmation paradigm, as well as affective component of satisfaction, are taken into account when operationalizing the satisfaction with VCs construct. 2 Research Model and Hypotheses This research adopted the conceptual model proposed by Jiang (2005). However in the original study, the choice of general travel VTCs, where people mostly relate their travel experiences, made some of the results inconclusive and required further testing of the model. This was attributed to the selection of the low-risk virtual environment of general travel communities, where trust in digital identity management was not crucial to successful functioning of the VTC. The model is proposed to be tested on cruise travel communities like carnivalcruiselines.com, cruisecritic.com, etc. The cruise industry is rapidly growing with routes becoming more exotic and tailored to the customer, combining changing ships, air travel, and land trips. People look for more and more exotic destinations like Middle East and African countries. However, due to the global political situation, western travelers associate these destinations with higher risks to personal safety, as well as political, social, and epidemiological risks. Therefore, consumers want to obtain reliable information from those who have been there, done that. Since the risk perception is high, trusting fellow community members and the VTC on the whole is more important for member satisfaction. In addition, cruise travel is a luxurious and expensive experience. Even if communications in cruise VTCs do not involve financial transactions, financial implications, associated with a 1poor decision-making on the part of the potential

4 traveler, are higher than in general travel communities. Therefore, cruise communities seem to be a good choice of sub-travel VTCs to further test the model. H1 Explicit DI from H2 Attitude towards H5 Implicit DI from VTC Perception of DIM H4 Satisfactio n with DIM system from VTC H3 Trust in DIM H6 Fig. 1. Conceptual Model: Hypotheses 1-6 In addition, modern VTCs are complex environments which incorporate many advanced technology features. Layouts of websites integrating all these features can be quite complex, so that novice VTC users might easily get frustrated and report a low level of satisfaction with VTCs. Hypothesis 7, which tests how end users technology competence affects their satisfaction with VTCs, was added to hypotheses 1-6 stated by Jiang (2005). The questionnaire was also re-designed to improve on measurement of the model constructs. To examine the underlying dimensions of end users satisfaction with DIM in cruise travel VTCs, the SEM methodology will be used in this research. H1: End users perception of DIM quality is a function of three factors: perceived explicit digital identity, perceived implicit digital identity and perceived technical features in virtual communities. H2: End users perception of DIM quality has a positive influence on their attitude towards DIM.

5 H3: End users perception of DIM quality has a positive influence on their trust to DIM. H4: End users perception of DIM quality has a positive influence on their satisfaction with virtual communities. H5: End users attitude towards DIM quality has a positive influence on their satisfaction with virtual communities. H6: End users trust in DIM quality has a positive influence on their satisfaction with virtual communities. H7. The higher the level of technology competence, the higher the end users satisfaction with VCs. References Anderson, R. E., & Srinivasan, S. S. (2003). E-satisfaction and e-loyalty: a contingency framework. Psychology and Marketing, 20(2), Boyd, D. (2000). Faceted Id/entity: Managing Representation in a Digital World. MIT Master's Thesis. MA: Cambridge, Claub, S. & Kohntopp, M. (2001). Identity management and its support of multilateral security. Computer Networks, 37, Donath, S. J. (1999). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. In P. Kollock and M. Smith (eds.), Communities in Cyberspace, London: Routledge. Jiang, H. (2005). An investigation of end users perception, attitude, trust and satisfaction with digital identity management in virtual travel communities. Unpublished Master Thesis, Purdue University. Kozinets, R. V. (1998). On netnography: initial reflections on consumer research investigations of cyberculture. Advances in Consumer Research, 25, Mills, J. E., & Morrison, A. M. (2003). Measuring customer satisfaction with online travel. In proceedings of the International Federation of Information and Communications Technologies in Tourism Helsinki, Finland, January 27-February 1, Nabeth, T. (2005). Understanding the identity concepts in the context of digital social environments. Network of Excellence FIDIS. Oliver, R. (1997). Satisfaction: A Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer. New York, NY: Mc-Graw-Hill. Pato, J. (2003). Identity management: setting context. Encyclopedia of Information Security. Accessed on March 29, Preece, J. (2000). Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. Chichester: Wiley. Rothaermel, F. T., & Sugiyama, S. (2001). Virtual Internet communities and commercial success: individual and community-level theory grounded in the atypical case of TimeZone.com. Journal of Management, 27, Wang, Y., Yu, Q., & Fesenmaier, R. D. (2002). Defining the virtual tourist community: implications for tourism marketing. Tourism Management, 23, Westbrook, R. A., & Oliver, R. L. (1991). The dimensionality of consumption emotion patterns and consumer satisfaction. Journal of Consumer Research, 18(1), Winer, R. S. (2001). A framework for customer relationship management. California Management Review, 43(4),