The effects of perceived effectiveness of e-commerce institutional mechanisms on customer stickiness: The role of customer value co-creation in ota platforms in Viet Nam

Abstract

Information and communication technologies have been creating new consumption habits. Especially, after COVID-19 pandemic, online transactions become popular and using online travel agent platforms such as Booking.com, Agoda, Trip.com, Traveloka has also been a widespread practice for Vietnamese tourists. Actively participating in online travel agent platforms enables tourists to contribute their knowledge and expertise throughout the service process to co-create service value. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of perceived effectiveness of e-commerce institutional mechanisms on customer stickiness under the mediation role of customer value co-creation on e-commerce platforms. Based on service dominant logic, the proposed research model includes 9 constructs and 15 hypotheses that mainly focuses on the relationship among customer value co-creation, perceived effectiveness of e-commerce institutional mechanisms and customer stickiness. This model is validated by data collected from 258 Vietnamese tourists who used any online travel agent platform. The results show that: (1) customer value co-creation is influenced by perceived effectiveness of e-commerce institutional mechanisms, customer experience quality, customer perceived ease-of-use, customer-to-customer interaction quality and customer perceived service climate; (2) customer value co-creation influences customer stickiness, customer empowerment and customer perceived value. Factors in the validated model explain 52.8% of the variance of customer stickiness. This study contributes to the growing service research an empirical evidence which affirms the importance of perceived effectiveness of e-commerce institutional mechanisms for value co-creation and of value co-creation on customer stickiness in ecommerce services. It adds to the existing literature by proving that an institution-based trust lever like perceived effectiveness of e-commerce institutional mechanisms can initiate other resources to jointly lead to customer value co-creation on e-commerce platforms. Managers in the tourism field can use these results as references to develop solutions improving customer stickiness through fostering customer value co-creation.