The impact of internal reference price in online hotel bookings willingness to pay

: the moderating role of individual characteristics

Abstract

The increased use of internet to search for the best deals regarding hotel bookings have created a highly competitive environment were online accommodation aggregators do not stop appearing and overburden the marketplace with deals. Consumers evaluate the offers using reference prices being them internal or external and because of that the understanding of this concept can help managers to build a pricing strategy that will allow them to remain competitive within the market. The aim for this dissertation is to explore the relationship between a two dimensional operationalization of the internal reference price concept and individuals’ willingness to pay. In order to understand better the mentioned relationship three individual characteristics were considered - involvement, frequency and loyalty. To perform this analysis an extensive literature review was done in order to understand the reference price concept and what individual characteristics could influence it. After this quantitative research was performed trough an online questionnaire having collect 300 valid responses. The results indicate that both dimensions of internal reference price have influence in predicting willingness to pay and all of the three individual characteristics considered have proven to be significant in this relationship.

Date of Award	1 Mar 2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Daniel Fernandes (Supervisor)