Tourism cloud development
In recent years, by overcoming a front-loaded investment in IT-related equipment and life-cycle maintenance investments, cloud computing has been considered a promising approach with significant cost advantages (Mohaupt and Hilbert 2013; Park and Ryoo 2013), seamless and secure access irrespective of time, space, and portable devices (Lin et al. 2009; Marston et al. 2011). With advanced functions and designs, cloud services can enable more proactive customer-to-business relationship as well as convenient network access with rapid information provision (Chen and Tseng 2013; Kalloniatis et al. 2014). Due to plentiful benefits, cloud technology has been widely applied to various service fields, especially in tourism industry as they efficiently meet customer expectations and promote their satisfaction (Bilgihan et al. 2011; Gopalani and Shick 2011) and open up new avenues for tourism service providers to deliver value-added services to tourists (Lee et al. 2014).
It has been observed that tourists nowadays begin their trip before they arrive, which brings about great competition in attracting customers through building web services or platforms that are sufficient, efficient, and available irrespective of places and time (Martin et al. 2012). On response, a wide range of countries have integrated cloud technologies into tourism activities in order to develop effective information platforms for tourists, for instance the “Smarter Tourism” and “Smart Tourism Destination” in China for timely providing location-based services and real-time, multi-directional experience among service providers and tourists (Zhang et al. 2012), the Context Cloud infrastructure in Spain with a web front-end where tourists’ context-aware mobile services can be easily configured using Google Maps layer and Drools Expert System (Martin et al. 2012), the touristic cloud context-aware recommendation system in Italy which is based on previous users’ experience, tourists’ personal preferences, and situational contexts for recommending touristic paths (Amato et al. 2014), etc.
Theoretical development
Information quality and overall satisfaction
In the extant literature, information quality has been referred to as the IT user interface’s generation of relevant and accurate information in accordance with customer needs (Petter et al. 2013). As such, information quality encompasses the aspects of accuracy, precision, and timeliness (Chen et al. 2015).
In prior TAM and IS success-related studies, customer satisfaction has been defined as consumers’ positive post-purchase evaluation and responses to product or service experience (Lin and Wang 2006), being derived from the fact that the systems provide products or services that exceed users’ expectations (Raval 2010). Hence, customer satisfaction implies the systems’ effective endeavours in enhancing their value-added gains, which in turn stimulates their repurchase intention, word-of-mouth, and loyalty (Chou 2015).
Concerning the relationship between these two dimensions, previous studies have suggested that information quality and customer satisfaction are consistently correlated (Chen et al. 2015; DeLone and McLean 2004; Petter et al. 2013). Based on these premises, the first hypothesis was proposed as follows:
H1
Cloud services’ information quality has a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
Function quality and overall satisfaction
Regarding function quality, cloud system’s storage capacity and the system functions has been indicated to potentially lead to user dissatisfaction if not fulfilled (Lee et al. 2014). Moreover, previous success IS studies have put forward that function quality influences users’ overall satisfaction through providing satisfactory storage capacity (Burda and Teuteberg 2014) as well as effective usability, availability, reliability, and adaptability (Chen et al. 2015; DeLone and McLean 2004). Hence, the following hypothesis was assumed:
H2
Cloud services’ function quality has a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
Real feedback and users’ overall satisfaction
This study is based on prior studies to refer cloud system’s real feedback as timely responses and assistance to both customers’ complaints and requests (Chou 2015). Since approximately 91 % of unsatisfied customers may not conduct repurchase while about 82–95 % of them may remain with a system once being provided with timely feedback and assistance as well as being appropriately addressed regarding their complaints (Faed et al. 2014), real feedback has been expected to exert certain impact on user (DeLone and McLean 2004). In line with this, real-time travel assistance and feedback have been suggested to beneficially offer tourists with latest information relevant to their needs and motivate tourists—tourists’ conversations, which in turn dramatically affect their satisfaction (Lee et al. 2014). Accordingly, the following hypothesis was stated:
H3
Cloud services’ real feedback has a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
Multiple visual aids and overall satisfaction
Previous studies have referred an IT system’s or user interface’s multiple visual aids to its emotional appeal and are expressed through colours mix and layout, shapes, font type and size, music, animation, photos, sound effects, text clarity, readability, etc. (Cyr et al. 2006). Noteworthy, the role of multiple visual aids on customer satisfaction remains controversial in the extant literature. Specifically, since multiple visual aids are used to deliver information, they are argued to significantly increase dissatisfaction if not well-managed (Daft and Lengel 1986; Lorenzo-Romero et al. 2013; Tuch et al. 2010); hence, customers’ sensory experience toward interface visual design has been proposed to considerably influence whether a user stays and shops (Cyr et al. 2006; Rosen and Purinton 2004). On contrast, since it has been argued that visual attributes are must-have basic qualities of web portals or IT systems (Lee et al. 2014), they will not affect user satisfaction. Therefore, in order to explore multiple visual aids’ actual impact on customer satisfaction, this study establishes the following hypothesis:
H4
Cloud services’ multiple visual aids have a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
Enjoyment and customers’ overall satisfaction
The concept of ‘‘enjoyment’’ (i.e. “fun”, “playfulness”) has been recently incorporated to the TAM model in IT-related studies in order to better explore user pleasure toward utilizing a system (Chung and Tan 2004; Daft and Lengel 1986). Noteworthy, it has been put forward that customers’ enjoyment toward the use of a system positively affects their overall satisfaction and loyalty by clarifying that when individuals are in the enjoyment state, they will perceive the interaction intrinsically interesting as well as pleasure and playfulness, which in turn stimulates their positive attitude and repurchase intention toward the system (Cyr et al. 2006; Moon and Kim 2001). Therefore, two following hypotheses were suggested:
H5
Customers’ enjoyment toward cloud services has a positive impact on satisfaction.
H6
Customers’ enjoyment toward cloud services has a positive impact on their loyalty.
Customers’ overall satisfaction and loyalty
Previous researches have widely defined customer loyalty to be favourable attitude toward a specific website or IT system and repetitive buying behaviour without intention to switch to another, which can be reflected through customers’ re-purchase behaviours, and purchase frequency (Chou 2015; Cyr et al. 2006; Flavian et al. 2006; Lin and Wang 2006).
Customer satisfaction of IT system has been indicated to positively affect customer loyalty (DeLone and McLean 2004; Gudigantala et al. 2011; Kalloniatis et al. 2014; Kim and Kankanhalli 2009; Shin et al. 2013; Song et al. 2012). Moreover, Tseng (2015) indicated that the popularization of Internet and the development of cloud computing have not only changed our lifestyles, but have impacted the ways in which enterprises relate with their customers and found web-based self-service (WBSS) satisfaction has a significant positive influence on WBSS continued usage intention. In other words, satisfied customers will be more likely to use the same IT system (including cloud computing system) of user interface again. Based on these studies, the following hypothesis was assumed:
H7
Customers’ satisfaction toward cloud services has a positive impact on their loyalty.