非品牌酒店的机会?预订渠道转换下的消费者品牌敏感研究

Emerging Opportunities for Underdog Brand Hotels? A Study of Consumers' Brand Sensitivity under the Context of Switching Booking Channels

近年来,酒店预订渠道发生了深刻变革,以OTA为代表的网络预订渠道的发展能否为非品牌酒店创造更多的销售机会?文章基于消费者信息处理理论,采用情景模拟实验的方法,通过三组随机实验模拟了OTA相对于传统渠道在信息总量(多、少)、信息类别(感官属性、非感官属性)和可选酒店数量(多、少)三个正交维度上的演化历程,探索品牌要素在消费者酒店预订决策过程中的作用,关注决策环境变化导致的品牌重要性的改变,解析使得消费者从品牌敏感到品牌脱敏再到品牌敏感的因素及其影响机制。实验结果表明,在酒店预订中提供更为详细的酒店信息,尤其是提供酒店的感官属性信息能够有效地降低消费者的品牌敏感程度,但仅增加非感官属性信息则不会产生显著影响;当酒店属性信息过载时,增加备选酒店的数量将会使消费者对品牌的敏感程度再次提高,而若属性信息较少,无论酒店数量多寡,消费者均表现为高度的品牌敏感。该研究为当前非品牌酒店的销售工作、酒店的品牌营销策略与OTA的渠道政策提供了全新的评价视角和改进建议。

In recent years, the hotel booking channels have transformed profoundly. Can the development of online booking channel such as OTAs create and boost new sales opportunities for underdog brands？ The purposes of the present research are threefold： to explore the role of brand in consumer＇ hotel booking decision making, to understand the changes occurred to the importance of brand as a result of variance in the decision making environment, and to uncover factors enabling consumers to evolve from brand sensitivity to brand insensitivity and its underlying mechanism. From the perspective of consumer decision environment, the evolution of hotel booking channels essentially reveals the process that the amount of hotel information, the type of hotel information available, and the number of available hotel choices increase over time. Drawn from consumer information processing theories, we conducted three randomized experiments to illustrate the evolution of hotel booking channels on three orthogonal dimensions including the amount of information （abundant vs. scarce）, type of hotel information （sensory vs. non-sensory）, and the number of alternatives （abundant vs. scarce）. More specifically, study 1 analyzes the impact of increasing information amount on consumers＇ brand sensitivity based on Information Processing Theory; study 2 interprets the mechanism how different types of information can influence brand sensitivity based on Structural Alignment Model; study 3 employs the Elaboration Likelihood Model to measure changes in consumer brand sensitivity as a result of growing number of hotel choices, and analyzes the interaction effect between choice overload and attribute overload. Our results indicate that： 1） consumers were highly sensitive to brand when making hotel booking via the traditional channel. In experiment 1, the entire sample of A1 group univocally selected the branded hotel, suggesting brand can significantly enhance the competitive advantage of hotels. 2） compared to traditional channel, OTA channel has enabled consumers to obtain richer information concerning hotels, significantly reducing consumers＇ sensitivity to brand. The contrast between A1 and A2 group concluded that more detailed hotel information indeed weakened consumers＇ consideration of brand during booking （H1）. The experiment 2 further suggests that, in addition to the amount of information, it is important that the type of information aligns with product attributes. Sensory attributes were proved more effective in brand desensitization because consumers assigned greater weights to sensory attributes when booking hotels where service was deemed as the core element of the product （H2a, H2b）. 3） Consumers would be redirected to brand information in decision making when overwhelmed by information processing pressure due to too many options provided by OTA. The experiment 3 suggests that the influence of information provision on desensitization is not unidirectional. Instead, consumers again behaved sensitive to brand when their loads of information processing increased （H3a）. However, consumers consistently demonstrated sensitivity to brand if attribute information was lacking, regardless of the number of hotel options （H3b）. Based upon the above conclusions, this research provides marketing insights for the sales of underdog brand hotels, marketing strategies of branded hotels, and the channel strategies of OTA, respectively.