E-Branding in the Swiss Hotel Industry

Résumé du document

This research goes through the evolution of branding to e-branding and analyzes it for the Swiss lodging industry. From a database of 2'448 hotels in Switzerland, this research explores domain names used by Swiss Hotels. Based on many criteria such as: registration date, region (canton), language, touristy zones, general situation and the quality of the domain name, we tried to define what the general factors that influences the quality of a domain name in the Swiss lodging industry are.

Extraits

[...] A well-chosen brand name can produce a number of specific advantages including suggesting product benefits (McCarthy and Perault, 1990; Turley, Moore, 1995), contributing to brand identity, simplifying shopping, implying quality (McNeal and Zerren, 1981; Turley, Moore, 1995) evoking feelings of trust, confidence, security, strength, durability, speed, status and exclusivity (Shimp, 1993; Turley, Moore, 1995). There are even times, particularly when marketing homogeneous goods, where the brand name may be a product's only distinguishing characteristic (Skinner, 1990; Turley, Moore, 1995). Most introductory marketing textbooks recognize that a good brand name should also have several properties. A short crisp brand name is usually preferred over longer more complex names. [...]

[...] Region 2 (city) on the other hand decreases this probability. All things being equal, hotels in town have 1/3 of the probability of having the name of the locality in the domain name compared to the hotels in the other regions. and Table 3.4 In order to be able to treat quality as a variable "yes/no" which allows the models above, quality "algo" was recoded in two levels: 0 = low quality = high quality. Logistic regression Number of obs = 828 LR chi2(6) = 34.61 Prob > chi2 = 0.0000 Log likelihood = - 472.86305 Pseudo R2 = 0.0353 qalgohigh Odds Ratio Std. [...]

[...] Domain names As the Internet became more stable and widespread, the distribution of names and network numbers quickly outgrew its initial clientele: military, government and government-sponsored research organizations (O'Daniel; Wai 2000). The Domain Name System (DNS) helps users find their way around the Internet. Every computer connected to the Internet has one or several unique address(es) called address” (Internet Protocol address); rather than typing people find the ICANN (The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers) at www.icann.org (ICANN 2004). [...]

[...] With experience, Web users rely less on search engines and gravitate towards easy-to-remember domain names, such ford.com”, to find websites (Ries and Ries, 2000; Raffa et al. 2003). In the past 40 years the domain name evolution on the web has been significant. In the 1970s the IP was a complicated number, in the 1980s domain names as the dot com appeared. In 2000 more and more extensions are created to face the increasing demand for a domain name that corresponds to the name of the brand in a dot com. [...]

[...] Interval] German after1998 standing _Ireg_2 _Ireg_3 _Ireg_4 To be in the German speaking decreases ( 0.71 chi2 = 0.0145 Log likelihood = - 137.04539 Pseudo R2 = 0.0547 n Odds Ratio Std. Err. z z Conf. Interval] German after1998 standing _Ireg_2 _Ireg_3 _Ireg_4 The fact that the hotel is in a German speaking region makes that the domain name has 2.86 times more chance to have the name of the hotel in the domain name. What increases this probability is also the fact of belonging to the region 3 (lake) or region 4 (mountain), especially mountain When one goes up in standing, probability of having a domain name which comprises the name of the hotel decreases. [...]