ABSTRACT
The use of the Internet has grown rapidly in a very short time, and nowadays it has become an indispensable product. Since 2000, the use of the Internet in households and by individuals is widespread in developed countries. In the EU some countries, such as Germany, France and the UK, have shown strong growth, as reflected in the data from the OECD (2007). The Internet is a nearly perfect market with instantaneous information and buyers comparing the offerings of sellers worldwide. In general, the Internet could be deemed as an information system and also as an electronic marketplace, so, these characteristics allow the Internet to be considered an intermediary between buyers and sellers to exchange information about prices and product offerings. One of the Internet markets that has been developing towards higher levels of sales is the online travel-tourist market, which has increased by as much as 34 per cent from 2004 to 2005 (Marcussen, 2006). The advantage of the use of the Internet with a tourism purpose is twofold: it can act as a promotional tool or it can be used focusing on its capacity to do e-trade. At first, the promotional application was the reason why the tourist became so interested in the Internet. The second reason was e-commerce, which should be understood as reservations and/or shopping for tourist products. There are some studies that analyse demographic characteristics linked with the individual decision to use the Internet (Cassel, 1999; Goolsbee, 2000; Madden, Savage & Simpson, 1996; Rappoport, Kridel & Taylor, 2003). Others examine the consumer’s behaviour in the online markets (Brynjolfsson & Smith, 2000; Clemons, Hann & Hitt, 2002). However, the empirical literature on e-commerce for tourist travel decisions is very scarce. It is limited to some mainly descriptive papers, for Spain IBIT (2001), or for others not related to tourism consult (Alm & Melnik, 2005; Goolsbee, 2000). Our chapter focuses on the influence that e-commerce is having on the tourist industry by assuming that tourists compare the stochastic utility of several alternatives and select the one that maximizes their utility. Also,
considering that access to and use of the Internet are different concepts, this chapter demonstrates how observed and unobserved determinants of the access to the Internet with a tourism purpose are important in order to buy online tourist travel products or services. With this purpose, we next review a conceptual framework that explains the tourists’ choice in an e-commerce model. We then describe the database and move on to show the empirical results and the analysis on the factors that influence the decision of e-commerce choice for foreign tourists who come to Spain. Finally, we present the main conclusions on the impact of e-commerce on the tourist purchase decision experience in Spain.
