The Impact Of Website Quality On Customer Initial Trust

In recent years, with the supporting of advanced suppliers and giant demand, online reservation market of China tourism websites have been achieving a great development rapidly, and come to be three major online travel business together with hotel and airfare booking. However, compared with the increasing market share, its market penetration rate performs poorly and has a great gap behind the developed countries (eg:Europe, the United States). One of the key reasons which lead to such unsatisfactory situation is lack of initial trust. Therefore, it is strategic and significant to establishing the customers’initial trust, which can thus promote our online tourism reservation to get a great breakthrough.Factors, which play a great role in initial trust building, can be classified into four aspects, are websites, customers’characteristics, enterprises and e-commerce environment. Depend on the theoretical research and development status of China online tourism reservation, website quality was selected as this paper’s perspective. Specially, in this study, the following questions will be answered:which factors of website quality can have an influence on the customer’initial trust, what relationships among website quality&initial trust&purchase intention might exist. To solve these problems, the website quality-customers’initial trust model was built. In the model, the website quality of online tourism reservation was measured in five dimensions, that is, usefulness, ease of use, information quality, customization, communication and community. Through quantitative analysis and empirical research, main conclusions were as follows:·he website quality scale was adjusted into new six dimensions, that is, ease of use, system usefulness, information usefulness, community, customization and communication.·esides, all new six dimensions have a significant positive influence on customers’initial trust, and their influence (from high to low) can be sorted into information usefulness, system usefulness, ease of use, community, customization and communication.·bout weather customers’initial trust plays an mediating role, the results show that, within ease of use, system usefulness, customization, communication and purchase intention, customers’initial trust play a full intermediary role; within information usefulness, community and purchase intention, it plays a partial mediating role.·In addition, with the aid of variance analysis, the study find that difference among customers’gender, age, educational background, number of views both in chosen website and other online tourism reservation websites can not cause the differences in their initial trust level significantly, but the different purchase experience in other online tourism reservation websites has lead to a significant difference. At the same time, difference both in gender and purchasing experience in other tourism reservation websites can cause significant difference in customers’ purchasing intention, however, difference among age, educational background, number of views both in chosen website and other online tourism reservation websites cannot.According to the conclusion, this study put up with corresponding suggestions as follows:improve information management, enhance system management, pay attention to interface design, perfect virtual community, provide customized service and efficient communication. This study is a useful complement to the online initial trust research in China, and will help solve the problem of lacking customers’trust thus attracting and obtain the new customers. It has an important practical and theoretical significance.