A Hybrid Multi-criteria Decision Making Model To Evaluate Smartphone Application Of Travel Reservation

With the rapid development of mobile Internet and popularity of smartphone, travel booking APP based on mobile terminal equipment has gradually become a new platform for information, communication and purchasing between travel booking service providers and consumer. In the face of fierce market competition, designing a useful, efficient travel booking APP which can meet the consumer demand is of vital importance for travel booking service provider to maintain customer relationships and expand the market share. In order to understand the customers’ needs and how many gaps should be filled between the status quo and an ideal APP, this paper propose a hybrid Multiple Attribute Decision Making(MADM) model to solve these problems.In this research, 16 criteria for evaluating travel booking APP were developed from the consumers’ decision-making process five stages: need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase choice and post-purchase behavior, combing with the characteristics of travel booking APP and tourism e-commerce sites evaluation criteria from the information systems and marketing perspective. The author first applies the DecisionMaking Trial and Evaluation Laboratory(DEMATEL) to cope with the interdependencies between evaluation criteria and construct influential network relation map(INRM). Next, it uses the Analytic Network Process(ANP) to computer weights for each criterion. Finally, the paper use the VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje(VIKOR) to rank the APP of Ctrip, Qunar and Alitrip.The results show that information search has the highest value of reason degree and the need recognition has the highest total degree of influence, while the post-purchase behavior is the most vulnerable to impact, which implies that the improvements can be prioritized in the following order: information search, need recognition, evaluation of alternatives, purchase choice and post-purchase behavior. Ranked by the weights, the experts think that post-purchase behavior is most important dimension, followed by purchase choice, evaluation of alternatives, need recognition and information search. Product expectations met is the most important criteria, order operation and customized service is the least important criteria. From the results obtained by VIKOR, the ranking order of alternative APP is Qunar, Ctrip > Alitrip. Finally, the results provide travel booking APP managers with a knowledge-based understanding of how to create improvement strategies that reduce the performance gaps of dimensions and criteria to satisfy consumers’ needs.