MEASURING e-SERVICE QUALITY (EXPECTION VS PERCEPTION) FROM TRAVEL AGENCIES' PERSPECTIVE: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON EGYPTIAN HOTEL WEBSITES
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to evaluate e-service quality from the Egyptian travel agencies' perspective, and to examine the discrepancies in e-service quality dimensions between customer’s expectations and perception of hotel e-service quality, in order to examine the fifth gap in service quality model in the context of hotel websites, which, in turn, is a crucial point of debate among researchers and an assumption that is inconclusive, contradictory, and inconsistent in the extant literature. Data was collected via questionnaire from random samples drawn from the population of travel agencies as customers using e-hotel service in Cairo. The constructs in this study were developed by using measurement scales adopted from prior studies. The instrument was evaluated for reliability and validity. The techniques for the data analysis included descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and paired-samples t-tests. The results in this study indicate that there is a real gap between customer expectation and customers' perceived service quality. This study and its results have several limitations but they also indicate directions for further research.
Keywords:
Internet marketing, e-service quality, Egyptian hotels, WEBQUAL, e-marketingDownloads
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