Browsing by Author "Cezar, Asunur"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Citation - WoS: 59
Citation - Scopus: 73
Analyzing Conversion Rates in Online Hotel Booking: the Role of Customer Reviews, Recommendations and Rank Order in Search Listings
(Emerald Group Publishing Ltd., 2016-02) Cezar, Asunur; Öğüt, Hulisi
Purpose – The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of three main technologies on converting browsers into customers: impact of review rating (location rating and service rating), recommendation and search listings. Design/methodology/approach – This paper estimates conversion rate model parameters using a quasi-likelihood method with the Bernoulli log-likelihood function and parametric regression model based on the beta distribution. Findings – The results show that a high rank in search listings, a high number of recommendations and location rating have a significant and positive impact on conversion rates. However, service rating and star rating do not have a significant effect on conversion rate. Furthermore, room price and hotel size are negatively associated with conversion rate. It was also found that a high rank in search listings, a high number of recommendations and location rating increase online hotel bookings. Furthermore, it was found that a high number of recommendations increase the conversion rate of hotels with low ranks. Practical implications – The findings show that hotels’ location ratings are more important than both star and service ratings for the conversion of visitors into customers. Thus, hotels that are located in convenient locations can charge higher prices. The results may also help entrepreneurs who are planning to open new hotels to forecast the conversion rates and demand for specific locations. It was found that a high number of recommendations help to increase the conversion rate of hotels with low ranks. This result suggests that a high numbers of recommendations mitigate the adverse effect of a low rank in search listings on the conversion rate. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the understanding of the drivers of conversion rates in online channels for the successful implementation of hotel marketing. © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Bulut Bilişim Uygulamaları ve Büyük Veri Analizinin Özellikle Müşteri İlişkileri Yönetimi ve Pazarlama Stratejilerinin Belirlenmesindeki Etkileri
(TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Graduate School of Economics and Social Sciences, 2017) Orka, Ömer Tarık; Cezar, Asunur
In this study, the effects of cloud computing and big data analyses with a particular emphasis on customer relations management, marketing and sales are studied. A literature review is presented in the introduction and the findings of survey/interview with 13 private sector executives are provided at the end of this thesis. Complementing previous studies conducted in governmental organizations, in this thesis usage of cloud computing and big data technologies in the private sector is studied and the effects of these technologies especially on marketing and customer relations management are examined. How companies utilize these technologies in marketing and customer relations management and their future plans and investment decisions are studied by means of interviews and surveys. Finally, the survey findings are analyzed to understand private sector's usage of cloud computing and big data technologies. Keywords: Cloud Computing, Big Data, Customer Relations, Marketing, Sales
Citation - Scopus: 1
Competitive Mobile Marketing and Its Impact on the Mobile Eco System
(Association for Information Systems, 2016) Cezar, Asunur; Raghunathan, Şrinivaşan
Targeting mobile consumers is similar to traditional targeting which focuses on stationary consumers in the sense both exploit data about consumers to tailor the marketing strategy. However, factors related to mobility such as travel direction or destination play an important role in a mobile consumer's evaluation of competing products. This paper focuses on consumer targeting using such mobile data. We seek to answer the following research questions in the above context using a game theoretic model: (i) How are the price competition between sellers, seller profits, consumer surplus, and social welfare affected when one or both sellers acquire the information, and (ii) What are the sellers' incentives to acquire the information? We do the analysis for the cases when the information includes only consumer location and when it includes both location and travel direction. We find that the ratio of unit time cost to unit transportation cost, which we refer to as the propensity for instant gratification, and the type of information offered by the app - location only or location and direction - shape the competition between sellers and their incentives to acquire the information. The findings have significant implications for the players in the mobile eco system.
Citation - WoS: 5
The Determinants of Domestic and International Visitors' Online Hotel Booking
(Elsevier Science Bv, 2012) Cezar, Asunur; Öğüt, Hulisi
We investigate the possible differences between domestic and international visitors in terms of their online hotel booking behaviors. For our data set, we choose the most popular tourist destination in the world: Paris. We examine the influences of quality metrics (customer review volume and valance and star rating) and price on the proportion of online bookings originated domestically. We identify various specifications used in previous researches and test the models against our data set. We find that price and review volume are significant and negatively associated with the proportion of domestic online sales in all model specifications. The estimates of marginal effects across the various model specifications are mostly similar. While a ten percent increase in review volume decreases the proportion of domestic sales by about 0.2 percentage points, a ten percent increase in average room price decreases the proportion of domestic sales by about 1.9 percentage points. Neither star rating nor customer rating is statistically significant. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the 8th International Strategic Management Conference
Citation - WoS: 8
Citation - Scopus: 9
Do Domestic and International Customers Behave Alike in Online Hotel Booking?
(California State University, Long Beach, 2014-10) Cezar, Asunur; Öğüt, Hulisi
The aim of this research is to explore online hotel booking behaviors of domestic and international customers. We examine the impact of review rating (location rating and service rating), review volume and hotel characteristics on the proportion of online domestic bookings. Using data from London and Paris hotels, we evaluate a variety of models to explain fractional dependent variables. Our results show that price, review volume and location rating have a significant and negative impact while service and star rating have a significant and positive impact on the proportion of domestic bookings. However, the proportion of international bookings does not increase if the hotel belongs to a chain group. Moreover, domestic customers are more sensitive to changes in price and service rating whereas international customers are more responsive to changes in location rating. The results suggest that that domestic and international customers' online hotel booking behaviors show significant differences.
Citation - WoS: 11
The Factors Affecting Writing Reviews in Hotel Websites
(Elsevier Science Bv, 2012) Ögüt, Hulisi; Cezar, Asunur
We aim to understand the people's motivation for writing the reviews in order to better explain drivers of WOM activities in the online channel for the successful implementation of the hotel marketing. For this purpose, we choose one of the popular tourist destinations: Paris. We collect data for empirical analysis from one of the biggest online hotel reservation website. Our analysis reveals that higher rating and lower price increases the propensity to write reviews. However, while the extreme rating and star score and star rating does not have any effect on the propensity to write a review. We have also found the evidence for the negative effect of larger room size on the propensity to write a review. These results imply that satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction increases people's motivation more for writing reviews in hotel websites. We briefly discuss the managerial implications of results. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the 8th International Strategic Management Conference
Citation - WoS: 54
Citation - Scopus: 71
Outsourcing Information Security: Contracting Issues and Security Implications
(INFORMS Inst.for Operations Res.and the Management Sciences, 2014-03) Cezar, Asunur; Çavuşoğlu, Hüseyin; Raghunathan, Şrinivaşan
A unique challenge in information security outsourcing is that neither the outsourcing firm nor the managed security service provider (MSSP) perfectly observes the outcome, the occurrence of a security breach, of prevention effort. Detection of security breaches often requires specialized effort. The current practice is to outsource both prevention and detection to the same MSSP. Some security experts have advocated outsourcing prevention and detection to different MSSPs. We show that the former outsourcing contract leads to a significant disincentive to provide detection effort. The latter contract alleviates this problem but introduces misalignment of incentives between the firm and the MSSPs and eliminates the advantages offered by complementarity between prevention and detection functions, which may lead to a worse outcome than the current contract. We propose a new contract that is superior to these two on various dimensions.
Citation - WoS: 44
Citation - Scopus: 45
Sourcing Information Security Operations: the Role of Risk Interdependency and Competitive Externality in Outsourcing Decisions
(Wiley, 2017) Cezar, Asunur; Çavuşoğlu, Hüseyin; Raghunathan, Şrinivaşan
Firms are increasingly outsourcing information security operations to managed security service providers (MSSPs). Cost reduction and quality (security) improvement are often mentioned as motives for outsourcing information security, and these are also the frequently cited reasons for outsourcing traditional information technology (IT) functions, such as software development and maintenance. In this study, we present a different explanation-one based on interdependent risks and competitive externalities associated with IT security-for firms' decisions to outsource security. We show that in the absence of competitive externalities and interdependent risks, a firm will outsource security if and only if the MSSP offers a quality advantage over in-house operations, which is consistent with the conventional explanation for security outsourcing. However, when security risks are interdependent and breaches impose competitive externalities, although firms still have stronger incentive to outsource security if the MSSP offers a higher quality in terms of preventing breaches than in-house management, a quality advantage of MSSP over in-house management is neither a prerequisite for a firm to outsource security nor a guarantee that a firm will. In addition to MSSP quality, the type of externality (positive or negative), the degree of externality, whether outsourcing increases or decreases risk interdependency, and the breach characteristics determine firms' sourcing decisions. When security breaches impose a positive externality, the incentive to outsource is enhanced if the MSSP decreases the risk interdependency and diminished if the MSSP increases this interdependency. A negative externality has the opposite effect on firms' incentives to outsource. A high demand spill-over to a competitor, together with a high loss in industry demand because of a security breach, enhances these incentives to outsource security operations when the externality is negative. Finally, we extend our base model in several dimensions and show that our main results regarding the impact of interdependent risks and competitive externalities on sourcing decisions are robust and generalizable to different specifications.