Correspondence: William G. Brunger, Continental Airlines, 1600 Smith St., Suite 941C, Houston, TX 77002, USA. Tel: +1 713 324 6660; E-mail: bbrung@coair.com

¹William G. (Bill) Brunger is the retired Senior Vice President — Network of Continental Airlines. He recently completed his Doctorate in Management from the Weatherhead School at Case Western Reserve University. Over a 28-year airline career, Bill has held a variety of officer-level airline positions in scheduling, pricing, revenue management, revenue decision support and strategic and distribution planning. He has a BA from Middlebury College and an MBA (with Distinction) from the Wharton School. He has been a member of the boards of directors of Amadeus, Orbitz.com and the Airline Reporting Corporation.

²Sheri Perelli, an international marketing, advertising and communications professional with 25 years of corporate, government and nonprofit experience in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa, teaches qualitative research methods in the Executive Doctor of Management program at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA and an MA, earned an MBA from the University of Chicago and a doctorate in management from Case.

Received 26 May 2008; Revised 26 May 2008; Published online 22 August 2008.

Abstract

Customers who use internet websites find and buy lower fares than those who use travel agents for similar trips despite identical fares and availability offered through both channels by most large US airlines. In an effort to understand, describe and corroborate economic and marketing theory explanations for these results, we studied the behavioural changes implied by the internet, asking customers how they have understood the transition to internet travel purchase and how it has changed their behaviour, specifically about the impact of their search process on fare levels. Interviewees identified increased 'breadth of search' and 'control' as the primary benefits of internet purchase channels revealing beliefs that lower fares are a by-product of broader and more thorough search. While new social and search involvement dynamics enabled by the internet seem to have increased the diligence of some subject's searches, many respondents described very simple one-or-two-step search strategies, and all used simpler search protocols than they knew were available.