Antecedents and consequences of electronic distribution channel strategies in the United States lodging industry: Operator's perspectives

This study investigated hotel operators' perception of electronic distribution channel strategies and antecedents and consequences of those strategies. The study was launched in an attempt to examine if there is an empirical linkage between these antecedents and consequences of electronic channel distribution strategy in the U.S. hotel industry.; While there are plenty of issues around distribution channel management, four research questions were formulated based on marketing and organizational theories: (1) contingency theory, (2) diffusion of innovation theory, and (3) channel power theory.; Several organizational and environmental determinants were posited from these overarching theories, including organizational slack, top management involvement, investment level, and innovativeness of the organization. The proposed consequences of electronic distribution channel strategies comprise negotiation power and performance.; As a preliminary attempt to apply these theories in the hotel electronic context, the scope of the research was limited to empirically test the model with the data collected from U.S. hotel operators.; Adopting a holistic view for model development, the current study proposed twelve hypotheses. The data was collected via web-based survey. An ordinary path analysis using composite score revealed that eight proposed hypotheses hold true in hotel electronic channel strategy. The finding of study implies that some proposed organizational determinants do not work in the same way as in other business organizations. For example, slack resource did not have a significant impact on a company's organizational innovativeness or investment level. The result was in line with the disagreement among researchers from the school of innovation adoption, in that the relationship between slack and innovativeness might not be substantial or could be nonlinear. Slack resource is assumed to result in more investment in technology-related studies, but is hardly tested in the data. The results of this study imply these issues cannot be overlooked and further investigation should occur in this area. Another groundbreaking discovery from this study was that top management involvement in managing channel distribution does not necessarily enhance the effectiveness of the management in hotel electronic context. Managing electronic distribution channels requires a number of choices and decisions to be made in a fast moving environment. The finding explains why hotel executives should hire experts to manage their electronic channels, rather than trying to control and manage channels for themselves. The study identified positive effects of proposed antecedents on Internet distribution strategy and its consequences.