What do buyers really want when shopping for travel online? The relationship between travel product attributes and online buyer behaviour

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relative importance of online travel product selection attributes and examine the variations in their importance due to travel buying behaviour and demographic characteristics. The reliability and validity of the instrument were assessed prior to the study. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics, MANOVA and t-tests. The results showed interesting variations due to both online travel buying behaviour and consumer characteristics. The relative importance of travel product selection attributes differed with regard to consumers' frequency of purchase, channel of purchase, amount spent on travel and gender. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research ideas are discussed.