Converting hotels web site visitors into buyers: how online hotel web assurance seals services decrease customers' concerns and increase online booking intentions

Purpose: Despite the increasing utilization of webpages for the purposes of information seeking, customers’ concerns have become a crucial impediment for online shopping. Our study mainly examines the influence of the effectiveness of web assurance seals services (WASS) and customers' concerns on customer's willingness to book hotels through perceived website trust and perceived value. Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire was administrated to measure the study variables. Using PLS-SEM approach to analyses the data collected from 860 users of online hotel websites. Findings: The results indicate that WASS influence positively on perceived website trust and negatively on consumers' concerns. As well as, perceived value and trust play a mediating role in the link between WASS and consumers' concerns and their intentions. Finally, perceived website trust and perceived value have greater effect on intention to book hotel for low-habit consumers. Research limitations/implications: Our study ignored the cross-culture issue as it concentrates on the customers from developing countries, so further research may need to compare between two or more than two samples from different societies that could give a significant insights. Second, our study stress on the Web assurance seal services (WASS) to predict customers booking intentions that indicates significant results, so further research may need to examine the role of online reviews as a predictor of customers purchase decision as well. Originality/value: To the best knowledge of authors, this is the first empirical research that investigates examines the influence of the effectiveness of web assurance seals services (WASS) and consumers' concerns on consumers' intentions through perceived value and trust. This research also investigates the moderating role of habit in the link between perceived website, perceived value and consumers' intentions