The Influence of Hotel Price on Perceived Service Quality and Value in e-tourism

LITERATURE REVIEW

Quality and Value as Perceived by Customers

Service quality and value as perceived by customers have long been of inter-

est to hospitality researchers. It is generally agreed that hotels should provide 

---

Ye et al. / INFLUENCE OF HOTEL PRICE ON PERCEIVED SERVICE QUALITY  25

good and continuous customer value. In addition, hoteliers need to place more 

emphasis on improving the quality of their services to meet the needs and 

expectations of their customers (Haywood, 1983).

Service quality means the ability to meet customers’ stated and implied require-

ments (Lin & Su, 2003). In the hospitality context, perceived service quality is a 

measure of how well the service delivered by hotels matches customer expectations. 

The vast majority of the literature focuses on providing different methods by which 

to evaluate hotels’ service quality; these can be used to measure both expected and 

perceived quality (Briggs, Sutherland, & Drummond, 2007; Erto & Vanacore, 2002; 

Hsieh, Lin, & Lin, 2008). In the hospitality industry, the point of looking at customer 

satisfaction is to identify the key attributes influencing their needs and expectations 

(Yang, Cheng, & Sung, 2011). Some studies have measured the factors affecting cus-

tomers’ choice of hotels. Finding room cleanliness, convenience of location, value for 

money, and friendliness of staff are all regarded as important factors in the process of 

assessing service quality (Callan & Kyndt, 2001; Lockyer, 2003; Choi & Chu, 2001). 

Furthermore, hotels with different star ratings have different quality standards, so that 

customers may experience different levels of performance depending on hotel classifica-

tion (Liu & Liu, 1993; Pine & Phillips, 2005).

The concept of value has been studied in various fields, particularly in hos-

pitality and tourism research (Sanchez, Callarisa, Rodriguez, & Moliner, 2005). 

Zeithaml (1988) identifies four distinct meanings for value: (a) low price, (b) whatever 

one wants in a product, (c) the quality the consumer receives for the price paid, 

and (d) what the consumer gets for what she or he gives. In the service industry, 

specifically, the value perceived by customers could be investigated via the 

service quality they receive and the price they pay. Slater and Narver (2000) 

define customer value as a trade-off between the benefit of consuming products/

services and the disadvantage (or sacrifice) involved. In the narrow perspective, 

benefit is identified as quality, and sacrifice is represented as price (Slater & 

Narver, 2000). However, Bolton and Drew (1991) argue that defining value as 

a function of quality is not enough. In the hospitality sector, some studies adopt 

particular components to describe customer value, such as quality, price, and emo-

tional and social value (Sweeney & Soutar, 2001); behavioral price, monetary 

price, emotional response, quality, and reputation (Petrick, 2002); and reputa-

tion for quality, value for money, and prestige (Slater & Narver, 2000).