E-satisfaction and continuance intention: The moderator role of online ratings

Given the growing importance of SNSs (social networking sites) in the online decision-making process, the authors present a new applied theory of motivation. Drawing from gratification theory, this study develops a causality model that links online informative motivation (OIM), e-satisfaction, and online ratings to guarantee the online customer's continuance intention. Although the partial least squares (PLS) findings extracted from a representative sample of 313 hotel customers confirm substantial positive linkages among the above constructs within this causality model, fuzzy set/qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) results take it one step further by reinforcing and refining the existing findings in the contexts of high and low levels of online ratings. Accordingly, implications for theory and practice, as well as research limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.