Affiliate Marketing in Tourism: Determinants of Consumers’ Trust

Abstract

Affiliate marketing (AM) is regarded as one of the promising and fast growing customer acquisition tools in eTourism. The present study aims to identify the key variables affecting consumer trust in tourism related affiliate websites. A mixed method approach was adopted to explore both the consumer's perspective via focus-group interviews as well as that of tourism affiliate practitioners via an online questionnaire. The main findings comprise firstly that there is a distinction between pivotal determinants of trust and trust enhancing factors. It is suggested that affiliates need to expose their competence and integrity to consumers. Affiliates that feature integrated booking engines need to reduce consumers' uncertainty by structural assurances and by providing background information on their website.