Information Search with Mobile Tourist Guides: A Survey of Usage Intention

Abstract

As mobile tourist guides show huge potentials to support tourists’ information search, executives need to know which mobile systems characterized by which specific functionalities should be provided. The paper proposes an empirical approach combining qualitative and quantitative methods to deduce both, product definition and product marketing information related to mobile tourist guides, respectively. First, a methodology-mix combining qualitative (i.e. explorative survey, focus group interviews) and quantitative techniques (i.e. pilot study, expert interviews) responds to the question ‘Which services should be developed?’ Secondly, again in the pre-prototype phase and based on survey data (N = 705) ideal functionality compositions for promising tourist guides are deduced with regression analysis. Finally, based on technology acceptance theory (Venkatesh et al., 2003a) customer prejudices towards mobile tourist guides are identified. The obtained results support hypotheses indicating strong performance expectations and pronounced effort expectancies towards the deduced concepts designed to support information search by means of mobile tourist guides