Page 840 - MARSIUM'21 COMP OF PAPER

841

by richness of the website in term of design, contents, usability, and information. For instance, online customers rely on website qualities to
assess the possible benefits and implications such as using traditional cues like brand and reputation to make decisions in the offline world
(Wang et al., 2015). According to Pengnate and Sarathy (2017), appealing website design is one of the factors that can boost trustworthiness
of an online business to increase shopping experience. In addition, an effective and functional website design drives away the barriers to
online transactions which impacts the degree of trust among customers. Anonymity is the common fear of internet users that prevent them
from becoming an online buyer or customer due to limitation of personal contact (Amornkitvikai and Lee, 2020). Anonymity is considered
as one of the obstacles in personal communication. One of the core purposes of a website is to stimulate communication and complete
transactions through the website itself (Wang et al., 2015). In fact, inadequate information of a business or brand provided in a website could
lead to lack of personal communication and increased the level of anonymity. A study on website quality by KoMarketing (2015) showed
that 44% of website visitors will leave a business website if they do not obtain sufficient information such as contact details.

In essence, the website content plays a major role in enhancing a website's trustworthiness. 38% of customers will stop engaging
with a website if the website’s content or layout is unattractive (Marikar, 2020). Theoretically, customers will experience five different stages
of making a purchase including problem or need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision and post
purchase behaviour. However, at the second stage of purchasing process, online customers solely depend on the information provided at the
website as they are unable to physically access the product before the purchase (Vasić et al., 2019). This indicates that the content of the
website particularly product or service information is crucial in both information search stage and purchase decision stage. Moreover, a
previous study about the influence of economy hotel website quality on online booking intentions has found that the website quality in term
of usability, ease of use, entertainment, complementarity is important in generating booking intention among customers (Li et al., 2017). As
highlighted by Jeon and Jeong (2015), the perceived website quality appears to be a precursor to customer satisfactions that positively leads
to customer’s intention for online transactions. In support, factors such as information quality, perceived ease of use and perceived
interactivity of the website are significant online hotel booking intention (Abdullah et al., 2019).

2.3 E-TRUST

Trust is defined as confidence of a person who believes to another person to perform a task in a way that satisfies the trustor’s
expectation (Truong, 2017). Trust can be explained in other perspective as a party’s willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of another
party based on the expectations that the other will perform a particular action significant to the party who trust (Al-Debei et al., 2015). An
individual trust can be explored in three aspects including ability, benevolence and integrity. For instance, trust is built on the ground of
ability to serve the interest of others while benevolence and integrity comprise the belief that another party will not act in a way that is
harmful to the trusting party (Xu and Mahenthiran, 2021). In electronic transactions, trust refers to a customer’s willingness to engage in a
transaction with the service provider (Cheng et al., 2019). The difference between the conventional offline and online trust is the technological
assurances and human interactions of online transactions (Cheng et al., 2019).

Trust is considered as a strong influential factor for customer’s purchasing intention in any business (Chahal, 2017). Trust is one
of the central features of buyer-seller relationships in a business environment particularly in the decision-making process when purchasing
a product from a store (Kim et al., 2017). According to Wang et al. (2015), e-trust is a behaviour that reflects the consumer’s willingness to
rely on other party over the internet. Unlike a physical store where customers may walk in and try on items, internet stores have almost no
way of ensuring that their products are exactly as they see on their websites. This indicates the trust is more important in online shopping
than brick-and-mortal shopping (Giao et al, 2020). According to Sarmah et al. (2017), customers are more willing to engage with products,
services, and experiences when the risk associated with such products or purchases is lower. Here, trust has become the mediating instrument
that helps consumers to lower their risk perceptions.

2.2 HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT

2.2.1 WEBSITE QUALITY

2.3.1.1 Usability of website

Usefulness is the primary determinant of behavioural intention to use online services (Hasbullah et al., 2016). A good usability of
website which designed based on internet user’s and needs will make the online shopping experience easier (Alcántara-Pilar et al., 2018).
According to Aboobucker and Bao (2018), usability refers to how a user sees and interacts with a website, such as simplicity and functionality
to navigate and the design for the type of site and business. The website usability is the main factor to influence online transactions acceptance
where the users address the usability from the level of information provided, functionality and ease of searching more information and
services on the website. Malaysian youth prefer websites that drives higher customer experience and online sales (Hasbullah et al., 2016).
Websites are developed to share information and generate communications with the visitors or users; hence, it is crucial for organizations to
ensure that their website are rich in term of accessibility and usability (Zarish et al., 2019). This implies that perceived usefulness can be one
of the determinants to predict the intention of customers to use the platform for online booking (Abdullah et al., 2016). Based on the
discussion, this study proposes the following hypothesis:

H1: The usability of website positively and significantly influences the online booking intention of customers.

841