Investigating the Evolution of Hotel Internet Adoption

Abstract

This article draws upon Diffusion of Innovations and Configurational theories to investigate how website features and email responses by 200 Swiss hotels reflect evolving Internet adoption. Complementary multivariate and artificial neural network (ANN) techniques support classifying the hotels into three clusters based on their website features. These clusters and the results of a structural equation model confirm that Internet adoption evolves from static to dynamic use, as organizations add website features and provide quality responses to customer emails. Practically, differences among these clusters suggest caution in adopting some website features. Academically, the study extends diffusion research and introduces metrics, particularly domain name age and quality email responses, for future research of organizational Internet adoption. Finally, the study illustrates how ANNs complement and help overcome limitations of multivariate techniques.