An empirical research on competitive advantages of travel e-business: A comparative perspective from resource-based view

Electronic businesses (e-business) play an important role in the travel service industry. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework to study e-business competitive advantages from resource-based view (RBV), and compare the differences between traditional and online travel agencies. Thirty eight management executives who are from the list of top 100 travel firms in China are invited to participate in this survey together with Delphi investigation. The results show that e-business competitive advantages in traditional business depend on the collaborative process capabilities and availability information sharing under win-win cooperative mechanism. Online reservation and customization services are the prominent competitive advantages of online travel firms that seek external organizational resources. These findings indicate the usefulness theoretical framework for examining e-business competitive advantages from RBV. They also provide insights for both business managers and policy-makers.