E-tourism: Internet Users Consumer Behavior Model at the Planning Trip Stage

Keywords: e-tourism, consumer behavior, search engines, e-commerce, e-word-of-mouth, SEM-model. This study investigates consumer behavior in e-tourism. The main problem that because of the growing number of Internet users and rapidly growing segment of e-tourism, that is kind of a transition from offline users to the online environment, it is a misunderstanding of how he eventually leads users in online. This is important for both travel agents and for online booking agencies. The aim of the research identify factors of influence on consumer behavior of Internet users at the stage of planning a tourist trip. In accordance with this purpose, the pool of tasks was determined by studying the ecosystem of e-tourism to conduct expert interviews and survey respondents, as well as building a model of consumer behavior. The subject of further empirical research is the ecosystem of e-tourism. The subject of the research is the consumer behavior at the stage of planning a tourist trip. It is expected that the results of the study will be useful for online reservation agencies, as well as off-line agencies for efficient modernization of existing services, as well as scaling and monetization of online processes in the company. Basic research methods used in the study - an analysis of the theoretical framework, conducting expert interviews, an online survey, as well as building a model with latent variables and factor loadings (SEM). This study allowed us to construct a model with 3 latent variables, and to identify the factor loadings for each of the stages of planning a tourist trip, as it was concluded by an extended study hypotheses and recommendations for online and offline travel agencies to provide services.