6.4. Limitations and future research
The limitations of this study are as follows. Firstly, although subjective measures were used for value co-creation, it is understood that both objective and subjective measures have advantages and disadvantages. Thus, where possible, future research should employ both measures to evaluate co-creation value. Furthermore, researchers are encouraged to adopt a longitudinal approach to ensure improved causality testing. Future research should consider including other variables, such as the business strategy and international orientation of an enterprise, to extend the proposed integrated model of e-marketing adoption. Further research must clarify the effect of top-management support and organizational incentives for the adoption of e-marketing systems. Secondly, the findings of this study provide a basis for additional research that might uncover crucial moderating effects on the relationship between adoption e-marketing systems and co-creation of value. Based on the findings presented here, future studies are encouraged to examine how governance mechanisms impact each another, and how they relate to specific outcome variables when various mechanisms are applied. It would be of value if future studies were to identify other moderators or facilitating mechanisms that create greater co-creation value for suppliers and customers through e-marketing adoption. Thirdly, this study has not analyzed the effect of the key customers’ industrial background. The samples used for the model estimation were all from international tourist hotels. The study did not examine other industrial influences or differences. Moreover, because the respondents in this study were volunteers, they were inevitably subject to self-selection variance.
