Consumer Experiences of Accommodation Deals Purchased via Social Coupon Promotions: An Australian Perspective

Abstract

The growing popularity of social coupons presents new marketing opportunities for the travel industry, with accommodation properties promoting deals to entice new visitors through the promise of a highly discounted stay. While their popularity has been well determined, little is known about the experience of guests who have purchased via these deals. This article explores guests' evaluations of Australian accommodation properties by travelers who purchased their accommodation through daily deals, otherwise known as "social coupons." A qualitative analysis of approximately 500 online reviews from travelers who had purchased an accommodation "daily deal" reveals 11 key themes in their poststay evaluations. Key issues integral to the success of social coupon promotions are delivering on the value adds promised, providing deal guests with an equitable level of service compared to nondeal guests, and ensuring that consumers are fully aware of the conditions associated with the deal.

Does social couponing stimulate positive eWOM and online referrals?

“…A qualitative approach similar to the one adopted by Cox (2015) was applied. In detail, we analyzed 564 reviews posted on TripAdvisor by guests that stayed at 76 Italian hotels using Groupon's coupons.…”

“…Recently scholars from several disciplines (marketing, hospitality and information technology) have addressed this phenomenon from the perspectives of its different participants: coupon users, daily deal websites and aggregators, merchants. In sum, the social couponing literature has covered the following issues: -the general functioning of social couponing (Kumar and Rajan, 2012;Sigala, 2013); -factors explaining the performance of daily deal campaigns (Eisenbeiss et al, 2015;Song et al, 2016;Subramanian and Rao, 2016); -popularity, benefits, drawback and management of social couponing for merchants in general (Aday and Phelan, 2015;Lee and Lee, 2012) or with a specific focus on restaurants (Heo, 2016;Kimes and Dholakia, 2011;Wu et al, 2012), hotels (Berezina et al, 2016Cassia et al, 2015), health and wellness businesses (Lee, 2016); -role, strategies and operations of daily deal websites (Krasnova et al, 2013) and daily deal aggregators (Blanco et al, 2015); -coupon users' attitudes and behaviors focusing on the purchase phase (Cheah et al, 2015;Coulter and Roggeveen, 2012;Luo et al, 2014;Nakhata and Kuo, 2014;Parsons et al, 2014), the redemption phase (Nakhata and Kuo, 2016) and the after-consumption phase (Cox, 2015).…”

“…A significant exception is the work by Cox (2015), who analyzed online travel reviews posted on a prominent website (that is a recognized leader in online reviews for the tourism industry) by guests who stayed at some Australian hotels using a coupon. This website is visited not only by people evaluating whether to buy a deal for a specific hotel, but also by potential "regular customers".…”

“…Therefore, the eWOM generated by couponers on this website may influence both other couponers and regular customers. Cox (2015) found that about 55% of the guests recommended the hotel favorably. Nonetheless, her study did not present an in-depth analysis of eWOM valence and of the factors that are statistically correlated with positive vs. negative eWOM.…”

“…In the last few years (and particularly in 2014 and 2015), several studies have started to examine deal subscribers' purchase, redemption and after-consumption behaviors, highlighting the social aspects of social couponing in general, and in the hotel industry in particular (Cox, 2015). Nonetheless, this stream of studies still presents two main limitations.…”