Jindal Journal of Business Research

http://brj.sagepub.com/ A Comparison between Museum, Hotel, and Tourist Sector Sites in a Country in Southeast Asia
Yun-Ke Chang and Miguel Angel Morales-Arroyo Jindal Journal of Business Research 2012 1: 43 DOI: 10.1177/227868211200100104 The online version of this article can be found at: http://brj.sagepub.com/content/1/1/43

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Jindal Journal of Business Research can be found at: Email Alerts: http://brj.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://brj.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://brj.sagepub.com/content/1/1/43.refs.html

>> Version of Record - Jun 1, 2012 What is This?

Downloaded from brj.sagepub.com by guest on February 1, 2013

A Global Threat Article Military-Madrasa-Mullah Complex

43 43
Jindal Journal of Business Research 1(1) 4351 2012 O.P. Jindal Global University SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC DOI: 10.1177/227868211200100104 http://jjbr.sagepub.com

A Comparison between Museum, Hotel, and Tourist Sector Sites in a Country in Southeast Asia
Yun-Ke Chang and Miguel Angel Morales-Arroyo
Abstract

The objective of this study is to compare three different kinds of portals in a country in Southeast Asia using a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria for e-commerce sites. The three types of business including hotels, museums, and tourism sectors were selected randomly. Three independent observers evaluated fifteen sites, and their results were consolidated to a single data set for analysis. Multidimensional Scaling was used to reveal patterns found in the data. The two dimensions in the MDS map were found to be associated with user perceived trustworthiness and transaction speed. In general, tourism sites do better in navigation and content categories; hotel sites do better in interface and reliability categories. Museum sites have more similarity as they are closer to each other in the MDS map. However, foreign language support was not observed on websites. Keywords E-commerce, evaluation, multidimensional scaling

Introduction
While the importance of good portal design is well accepted, the authors of this article found that there is little research and literature focusing on e-commerce website evaluation. Through a comprehensive evaluation of randomly selected sites, it is possible to discover the overall patterns of e-commerce practices in a region, by which one could benefit from the lessons learnt and prevent making similar mistakes. However, not many studies of this type have been done. The reason may be that an in-depth evaluation often requires a great deal of manpower with a comprehensive set of sound evaluation criteria. A person will very soon find out that it may take more than three hours just to browse through every page at a single e-commerce website. To achieve reliability, more than one person has to evaluate the same site, and the results from each individual should be consolidated. This article reports on evaluations

Yun-Ke Chang is an Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University, School of Communication and Information, Singapore. E-mail: ykchang@ntu.edu.sg Miguel Angel Morales-Arroyo is an Associate Professor at Institute for Research in Applied Mathematics and Systems (IIMAS), National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico. E-mail: migyke@gmail.com

India Quarterly, 66, 2 (2010): 133149

Downloaded from brj.sagepub.com by guest on February 1, 2013

44

Yun-Ke Chang and Miguel Angel Morales-Arroyo

of fifteen selected e-commerce portals in a country in Southeast Asia, five hotel sites, five museum sites, and five tourism sites.

Background
Among a business superior values, one is its ability to generate and provide information and services to existing and potential customers through the Internet, by which it fosters customer loyalty and many aspects of business relationships are improved. E-commerce over the Internet has become one of the major business activities that can create significant opportunities in various business environments to interact with customers, members, and partners. On the other hand, competition is also just one click away. Every organization today faces a simple choice due to the prosperity of the Internet: either take initiative to reorganize its business portal to support the changing needs of its online customers, or be forced to do so because of its more active competitors who have obtained business advantage by doing it. In addition, company portals can enhance or hamper its interaction with the stakeholders beyond geographical boundaries through Internet and e-commerce. While a well-designed portal can help establish loyal clientele and increase profits, poorly structured ones may lead to customers frustration and subsequent losses for the enterprise (Cunliffe, 2000; Davidaviciene & Tolvaisas, 2011). According to the fifth annual A.T. Kearney-Foreign Policy Globalization index, a country A in Southeast Asia leads the ranking as one of the most global nations. Its high trade levels, heavy international telephone traffic, and steady stream of international travelersall contribute to its high rank. The country was also reported to have a modern, open economy, and low degree of corruption. Moreover, according to the CIAs World Factbook, there are around 4 million online users in country A in Southeast Asia, approximately 62 percent of the population. The government of this country has a comprehensive strategy to transform its countrys economy into a network economy and build an intelligent island by carrying out a serial of actions, including developing skilled workforce, establishing large scale of information infrastructure, and removing hindrance to private sectors participation. However, to take advantage of these initiatives, eventually companies play a role in deciding and designing online activities for attracting customers to obtain their products or services. Although indicators such as number of online users, high speed broadband network, or policy environment can be used to measure or describe the ICT development of a country, the true revenue of e-commerce is derived from the actual transactions taking place. Customers online experience and satisfaction often have greater impact on the happening of those transactions. However, it is usually difficult to tell how well online customers are served or informed via a companys portal due to lack of systematic approach to assess websites. Some existing assessment models for e-commerce websites include the following: Schubert and Selz (1999) described a Web assessment model created by the Competence Center for Electronic Markets. Rababah and Masoud (2010) identified essential factors for the successful development of e-commerce sites. Liu et al. (2000) proposed Criteria for the design of e-commerce sites derived from a survey of web masters working for Fortune 1000 companies. Zhang et al. (2011) addressed the developing need for user to evaluate the quality of a website. DeLone and McLean (2004) proposed six dimensionssystem quality, information quality, service quality, use, user satisfaction, and net benefitsfor the evaluation of e-commerce sites; Phippen et al. (2004) considered customer lifecycle analysis and customer behavior analysis in their research in Web analytics; Kim and Lee (2003) conducted research on e-catalogs evaluation; Mao et al. (2005) reported survey data regarding top measures of Jindal Journal of Business Research, 1, 1 (2012): 4351
Downloaded from brj.sagepub.com by guest on February 1, 2013

A Comparison between Museum, Hotel, and Tourist Sector Sites

45

effectiveness for websites in businesses employing User Center Design (UCD); and Van der Merwe and Bekker (2003) proposed a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria for e-commerce sites. The evaluation criteria proposed by Van der Merwe and Bekker (2003), which focus on the customers purchasing process, were adopted in this study as they are broader than the other frameworks reviewed. Jen-Hung and Tzong-Ke (2011) addressed a different aspect of usability such as homepage screen density. Shu-Fang and Tzai-Zang (2011) has analyzed the impact of trust and usefulness in the perception of quality from the perspective of the user; Delafrooz, Paim and Khatibi (2011) developed models to understand the online shopping intention. Sunhilde (2011) developed another kind of model to gain a competitive advantage, such as Integrated Multi-selling Model. Al Sarayreh et al. (2011) and Davidaviciene and Tolvaisas (2011) studied the same intentions have been carried in different geographies. Shih-Ming and Sangruang (2011) perceived risks of online shopping in the research performed in Southeast Asia.

Material and Methods

It is a general belief that a large sample size is preferable in order to discover problems or generalize the research results using statistics analysis. However, it is unfeasible to have a large scale of websites evaluation if a comprehensive assessment for each individual site is desirable. Nielsen and Landauer (1993) have suggested that using three test users for a mediumlarge software project could gain the maximum cost/benefit ratio; therefore, three research assistants were involved in assessment in this study. The authors of this articles also decided that five randomly selected sites in each of the three categories are sufficient to serve the purpose in revealing the general features of and problems in the overall hotel, museum, and tourism e-commerce websites in country A in Southeast Asia.

Instrument
The instrument used in this research took criteria developed by Van der Merwe and Bekker (2003). The authors of this study found that evaluating items related to security, system design, software, and databases used by e-commerce sites were not all feasible for end users. Therefore, we adapted their measure to our needs and it eventually yielded 92 criteria within five categories to assess. The five categories are interface, navigation, content, reliability, and technical infrastructure with corresponding sub-categories: graphic design principles, graphics and multimedia, style and text, flexibility and compatibility, logical structure, ease of use, search engine and help function, navigational necessities, product/service-related content, company and contact information, information quality, interactivity, stored customer profile, order process, after-order to order receipt, customer service, speed, security, software and database, system design.

Data Collection Process

The entire population of the target websites that offer their services online with domain of the country under study was identified using a popular search engine. A list of hotel, museum, and tourism websites Jindal Journal of Business Research, 1, 1 (2012): 4351
Downloaded from brj.sagepub.com by guest on February 1, 2013

46

Yun-Ke Chang and Miguel Angel Morales-Arroyo

was compiled, and five sites from each category were randomly selected for evaluation. A total of 15 e-commerce sites were evaluated. The rationale of choosing only three types of sites is to focus on what might be interesting to tourists visiting the country in Southeast Asia. Data is collected in the summer of 2011. Three graduate students were trained in the assessment criteria of the instrument used. They evaluated all the fifteen sites and rated each site against criteria under the same conditions. After the data for each site was collected by each individual student, these three evaluators met to identify disagreements and resolve them. The discrepancy of data occurred between individual evaluators often due to different interpretation of the criteria; therefore, evaluators had to go back to re-evaluate the site after they got further verification of the definition of some criteria. This process was repeated until they achieved mutually agreed scores. Each e-commerce websites was rated on a 0 to 10 scale against each criterion. Zero means the absence of the characteristic.

Data Analysis
The objective here was to create a map that helps to visualize the e-business and the dimensions can explain their differences, using SPSS 16.0 for Windows. The best representation requires finding a solution with the minimal stress, and not degenerated. Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) is a set of non-inferential statistical scaling procedures that allow discovering hidden patterns in empirical data (Kruskal & Wish, 1978; Shepard, Rommey, & Nerlove, 1972). Furthermore, MDS attempts to represent in n-dimension space similarities between entities by mapping the distance between them (Coxon, 1982; Dunn-Rankin et al., 2004). According to DunnRankin et al. (2004) the process for doing MDS is the following: (a) Given a set of (m) entities, calculate the matrix of proximity. In this case, Euclidian distance was used, (b) a number of dimensions (n) were chosen. The m entities are placed in the n-dimensional space, (c) MDS represents the proximities f (ij) between the pair of entities in the n-dimension chosen attempting to maintain the original distances (dij), (d) the objective of MDS is to minimize the difference between f (ij) and (dij). In other words, when f (ij) = (dij), the algorithm is representing perfectly the original data in the n-dimension space, which can be expressed f (ij) (dij) = 0. MDS uses the following formula to calculate the goodness-of-fit: ([f(ij)(dij)]2 /scale factor)1/2, known as Stress. The closer to zero the stress is, the better the goodness of fit (Kruskal & Wish, 1978; Borg & Lingoes, 1987), and the better the method approaches the solution in successive approximations. The best stress can be found using the least square regression, but computational procedures use what is known as the method of steepest descent (Kruskal & Wish, 1978, p. 27).

Results
In the result of this study, a two-dimensional solution has a fair stress value (.12) and R-squared (RSQ), an indicator of the portion of variance accounted for in the MDS model in relation to the original data. The Shepard diagram, not displayed in this article, shows a good relationship between f (ij) and (dij). The results of MDS mapping were obtained and shown in Figure 1. The difference in value for different Jindal Journal of Business Research, 1, 1 (2012): 4351
Downloaded from brj.sagepub.com by guest on February 1, 2013

A Comparison between Museum, Hotel, and Tourist Sector Sites

2.0 h1 1.5 h5 Dimension 2 1.0 .5 0.0 .5 1.0 1.5 4 3 2 1 0 Dimension 1 m4 t4 h4 m5 m2 t5 m3 t3 1 2 3 t1 m1 h2 t2 h3

47

Figure l. MDS Map for e-commerce Sites

Notes: The prefix of each label indicates the type of sites: h = hotel, m = museum, and t = tourism.

variables was also calculated for interpretation. For example, to identify the differences between hotel 3 and hotel 4, the differences for each pair of values was calculated, isolating and studying, both the highest positive and negative values of the difference. Furthermore, multiple variables were compared simultaneously to identify differences. For example, in order to analyze the differences between a pair of sites for hotel 1 (hi)tourism 3 (t3) and the pair of sites for hotel 3 (h3)and hotel 4 (h4) to identify the differences in positive values and negative values of Dimension 1, the average for each pair of values was calculated and the difference for each variable was subtracted from each variable {Max Value |[(h3h4)/2-(hit3)/2]|}, isolating and studying, the maximum absolute values were identified and analyzed.

MDS Map
Those with positive values in Dimension 1 were found to be the sites with higher values in criteria like having the privacy of their users protected, secure payment systems used, their security systems is properly accredited, security protocols well communicated, perceived quality of product/service, full company information available, terms and conditions easily accessed, users perceived benefits from registering (Figure 1). It is understandable that this dimension has much to do with the users trust with the site basing on information available and effective communication. Those with higher values in Dimension 2 (Figure 1) were found to be the sites with higher values in these criteria: home page clear, use of color (effective, consistent), use of backgrounds, intelligible, straightforward organizing scheme, transparent, interactive, easy order process, quick reply to e-mail enquiries, good consideration of non-broadband users. These items have a similar characteristic: speed. Jindal Journal of Business Research, 1, 1 (2012): 4351
Downloaded from brj.sagepub.com by guest on February 1, 2013

48

Yun-Ke Chang and Miguel Angel Morales-Arroyo

With effective use of colors and clear design, users are able to navigate through sites easily; moreover, interactiveness, transparency, and quick response time also facilitate order process. Hotel 4 is far from the rest of the sites in the MDS map (Figure 1). The reasons are identified to be related to its interface, navigation, content, and information available: it does not have effective use of backgrounds or graphics/typeface/color combinations, the site is not visually attractive, no multimedia makes a contribution to navigation of site, the icons are difficult to understand, no label of current position on site, no extensive product/service information, inadequate amount of advertising of own products, full company information unavailable, terms and conditions cannot be easily accessed, and the content is not current and updated.

Average Scores in Each of the Five Categories

Figure 2 shows the average for the categories as defined in the instrument used in this study. Most sites score high in their interface and content. From this figure, it can also be noticed that in general these sites have more problems with reliability except Hotel 3 and Museum 1. It was observed that most sites do not communicate how they secure customers information and transaction in the online order process, and how they protect privacy. Variance in the technology category can also be observed in Figure 2. However, this may be due to the fact that the authors of this article did not have full access to examine every item in that category. From this graphic, it can be appreciated that hotels have more diverse scores in interface, navigation, and content categories than the rest.
10.00

Average Score

8.00 6.00 4.00 2.00 0.00 h1 h2 6.96 5.81 6.63 3.42 3.43 h3 7.23 5.81 7.37 7.75 6.79 h4 5.69 5.24 5.32 3.42 3.29 h5 6.65 5.43 6.00 4.17 4.79 t1 7.31 5.95 6.79 6.08 5.50 t2 8.04 5.62 7.26 3.83 5.29 t3 t4 t5 5.85 5.19 6.42 5.00 4.21 m1 6.65 7.05 7.26 7.17 6.64 m2 6.00 5.48 6.58 2.83 3.93 m3 6.04 5.48 6.79 4.58 8.14 m4 6.69 5.43 6.11 4.17 3.64 m5 6.08 5.19 5.95 3.25 3.71

Category 1 Category 2 Category 3 Category 4 Category 5

7.85 6.19 7.16 5.08 5.57

6.27 6.46 7.43 5.48 6.68 6.63 5.08 3.33 7.00 3.21

Type of Business

Figure 2. Average by Category

Notes: Series numbers represent five categories of criteria: Category 1 = interface, Category 2 = navigation, Category 3 = content, Category 4 = reliability, and Category 5 = technical infrastructure.

Jindal Journal of Business Research, 1, 1 (2012): 4351

Downloaded from brj.sagepub.com by guest on February 1, 2013

A Comparison between Museum, Hotel, and Tourist Sector Sites

49

Binary Variables
For those yes/no questions, we assigned 1 to yes and 0 to no. The average scores of binary variables is shown in a bar chart (Figure 3), in which all businesses show some types of contact information, which is part of the content category. The items that belong to the content information sub-category are e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers, and physical address. In this area, the tourism sites are not doing as well as hotels and museums. Most sites offer feedback forms; however, site maps are only offered by tourism 1 and tourism 3. Feedback form is an item in the customer service sub-category, which is part of the reliability category. Site map is part of the logical structure sub-category, which is part of the navigation category. Flexibility and compatibility sub-category belongs to the interface category, and includes items like printable versions, text-only version, foreign language support, and accommodation for disabled users. In this area, no business does really well, except Tourism 2. This is an unexpected result, for the country in Southeast Asia is considered as one of the most diverse places with various religions, ethnic groups and languages co-existing. The software and database category contains sub-categories such as whether users are advised on idea browser and monitor resolution. In this study, it was observed that very few sites had addressed these issues.

Discussion and Conclusions

The results of this study are preliminary. The authors did not test the validity of the instrument, and from the results obtained in this study, it looks like some sub-categories may not be mutually exclusive. Differences were found between different types of businesses, but given the restrictions of this study, it is not known if the differences are significant. One observation from the MDS map is that hotel websites

1.2

Average Score

1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 h 1 h 2 h 3 h 4 h 5 t t t t t m 1 2 3 4 5 1 Types of Business m 2 m 3 m 4 m 5

Company and contact information Customer service-feedback form Flexibility and compatibility Logical structure-site map Software and database

Figure 3. Nominal variables analysis. A score 1 was assigned to Yes, 0 to No. From the graphic, it is easily seen that most sites do not provide site map, and the issues regarding flexibility and compatibility are often neglected.

Jindal Journal of Business Research, 1, 1 (2012): 4351

Downloaded from brj.sagepub.com by guest on February 1, 2013

50

Yun-Ke Chang and Miguel Angel Morales-Arroyo

seem to have higher scores in Dimension 2; museum sites are more similar and have shorter distance among each other. It was found that overall tourism sites do better in the navigation and content categories; hotel sites do better in the interface and reliability categories. Finally, the authors were expecting that in a multi-cultural society, more foreign language support could have been found than in other countries, but that was not observed. Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Leu-Jiun Ten, Yanxiang Lu, and Andy Cheng for their help in data collection. This work was supported by the Academic Research Fund from School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

References
Al Sarayreh, M.N., Jawabreh, O.A.A., ALkharabsheh, K.S., & Aldahamsheh, M.M. (2011). Tourism promotion through the Internet, (Jordan as a case study). Asian Social Science, 7(6), 125135. Borg, I., & Lingoes, J.C. (1987). Multidimensional similarity structure analysis. New York: Springer-Verlag. Coxon, A.P.M. (1982). The users guide to multidimensional scaling (1st ed.). Exeter, New Hampshire: Heinemann Educational Books. Cunliffe, D. (2000). Developing usable web sites: A review and model. Internet Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy, 10(4), 295307. Davidaviciene, V., & Tolvaisas, J. (2011). Measuring quality of e-commerce web sites: Case of Lithuania. Economics and Management, 16, 17231729. Delafrooz, N., Paim, L.J., & Khatibi, A. (2011). A research modeling to understand online shopping intention. Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 5(5), 7077. DeLone, W.H., & McLean, E.R. (2004). Measuring e-commerce success: Applying the DeLone and McLean information system success model. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 9(1), 3147. Dunn-Rankin, P., Knezek, G., Wallace, S., & Zhang, S. (2004). Scaling methods (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Jen-Hung, H., & Tzong-Ke, Y. (2011). The impacts of homepage screen density on website evaluations: The moderating role of personality type. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 39(3), 381390. Kim, G.-M. & Lee, G.-S. (2003). E-catalog evaluation criteria and their relative importance. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 43(Part 4), 5562. Kiryoong Kim, Dongkyu Kim, Jeuk Kim, Sang-uk Park, Ighoon Lee, Sang-goo Lee, & Jong-hoon Chun; Seoul National University, Korea (2003). An evaluation of dynamic electronic catalog models in relational database system (chap. vii). The Journal of Managing e-commerce and Mobile Computing Technologies, 7385. Kruskal, J.B., & Wish, M. (1978). Multidimensional scaling. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE. Liu, C., Arnett, K.P., & Litecky, C. (2000). Design quality of web sites for electronic commerce: Fortune 1000 webmasters evaluations. Electronic Markets, 10(2), 120129. Nielsen, J., & Landauer, T. (1993). A mathematical model of the finding of usability problems. INTERCHI93 (pp. 206213). ACM Press. Mao, J., Vrendenburg, K., Smith, P.W., & Carey, T. (2005). The state of user-centered design practice. Communications of the ACM, 48(3), 105109. Phippen, A., Sheppard, L. & Furnell, S. (2004). A practical evaluation of Web analytics. Internet Research, 14(4), 284293.

Jindal Journal of Business Research, 1, 1 (2012): 4351

Downloaded from brj.sagepub.com by guest on February 1, 2013

A Comparison between Museum, Hotel, and Tourist Sector Sites

51

Rababah, O., & Masoud, F. (2010). Key factors for developing a successful e-commerce website. Communications of the IBIMA, 19. Schubert, P., & Selz, D. (1999). Web assessmentMeasuring the effectiveness of electronic commerce sites going beyond traditional marketing paradigms. Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, vol. 5. Retrieved October 18, 2005, from http://csdl2. computer.org/comp/proceedings/ hicss/1999/0001/05/00015040.PDF Shepard, R.N., Rommey, A.K., & Nerlove, S.B. (eds). (1972). Multidimensional scaling: Theory and applications in the behavioral sciences. New York: Seminar Press. Shih-Ming, P., & Sangruang, J. (2011). The perceived risks of online shopping in Taiwan. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 39(2), 275286. Shu-Fang, L., & Tzai-Zang, L. (2011). The influence of trust and usefulness on customer perceptions of e-service quality. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 39(6), 825838. Sunhilde, C. (2011). Achieving competitive advantage through using an integrated multi-selling model. The case from Romanian Linjerie Producer: Jolidon. Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, 4(1), 3942. Van der Merwe, R., & Bekker, J. (2003). A framework and methodology for evaluating e-commerce web sites. Internet Research, 13(5), 330341. Zhang, S., Duke, N.K., Jimenez, L.M., & Jimenez, L.M. (2011). The WWWDOT approach to improving students critical evaluation of websites. Reading Teacher, 65(2), 150158.

Jindal Journal of Business Research, 1, 1 (2012): 4351

Downloaded from brj.sagepub.com by guest on February 1, 2013

Downloaded from brj.sagepub.com by guest on February 1, 2013