An Empirical Study On Consumers' Online Ticketing Channel Choice Behavior

Under the background that China's economy has maintained steady development for many years and the per capita disposable income has been increasing,the market of Chinese residents in leisure tourism,immigration and overseas study has been expanding.In line with this,the demand for air tickets is also growing rapidly year by year,and the development potential of the aviation market is huge.The sales channel of civil aviation ticket has gradually developed from the government leading in the period of planned economy before 1992 to the offline sales mode relying on the traditional distribution agent.With the development of network technology and e-commerce,online ticket purchase channel has gradually become the mainstream channel for consumers to purchase tickets.In accordance with the trend of market changes,the sales channels of airlines have been transformed from offline sales channels to mixed sales channels based on online sales channels.More and more airlines have broken the cooperation mode relying on distribution channels for many years,established and enriched online direct sales channels by using existing resources,and tried to improve the proportion of direct sales channels.Under the channel development mode of online sales channel,airlines need to know more about the factors that affect consumer behavior,so as to better formulate the development strategy of online sales channel.As consumers will make full comparison and choose more favorable channels for themselves when making decision on channel choice.Therefore,what are the gains and losses perceived by consumers in online ticket purchase channels? Will these perceptions of gains and losses affect consumers' channel preference? In addition to the factors of consumers themselves,will the external environment of consumers also affect their channel preference? This brings a new topic to the development of the online sales channels of airlines,and is also the research direction of this paper.Most of the previous researches of scholars at home and abroad focused on the consumer choice behavior under the single channel(offline channel or online channel)or multi-channel(offline channel and online channel)environment.The research of this paper extends the theory of consumer behavior to online multi-channel(online direct channel and online distribution channel),which has theoretical value.In the field of airline ticket sales,scholars mainly focus on the conflict and management of multi-channels or from the perspective of airlines,while empirical research based on the theory of multi-channel behavior from the perspective of consumer perception is relatively few.From the perspective of consumers,under the background of network environment,this paper studies the relationship between consumers' perceived value and channel preference.At the same time,based on the theory of perceived value,this study combined with the theory of network externality,and considering the characteristics of the sales channels of airlines.This paper puts forward the assumption and model that under the environment of online ticket purchase,consumers' channel preference is influenced by consumers' perceived usefulness,perceived service quality,airline service convenience,perceived cost,perceived risk,perceived value and network externality.Research data was collected through questionnaire design,distribution and market research.In this paper,Structural Equation Model(SEM)is used for data processing.Statistical software,SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 24.0,is used to test the research hypothesis,so as to obtain the corresponding conclusions.The corresponding conclusions are as below.(1)In the online ticket purchase environment,the positive impact of the three perceived benefit variables of perceived usefulness,perceived service quality and airline service convenience have positive effect on consumer perceived value.(2)In the online ticket purchase environment,perceived cost has a significant negative impact on perceived value,but the significant impact of perceived risk on perceived value has not been verified.(3)In the online ticket purchase environment,consumers' perceived value and network externality have a significant impact on the willingness to choose online sales channels.Meanwhile,network externality acts to a certain extent on the perceived value affecting the willingness to choose online sales channels,showing a regulatory relationship and strong positive correlation.(4)Between each variable,consumer perceived usefulness,perceived service quality and airline service convenience are positively correlated with perceived value.Perceived cost and perceived risk are negatively correlated with perceived value.Perceived value and network externality are positively correlated with channel preference.Network externality positively adjusts the impact of perceived value on channel preference.Finally,the management suggestions were put forward.The research deficiencies were explained.And the outlook was made.