Search results

The purpose of this study is to explore “how social media influence the way consumers search, evaluate and select a hotel within the ‘evaluation stage’ of the wider hotel decision-making process”.

An exploratory qualitative research has been carried out, conducting 12 individual face-to-face, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with social media users, followed by a qualitative thematic analysis.

Social media transform the consumers’ hotel decision journey by influencing the way consumers search, decide and book hotels. The findings reveal the determinants shaping this process, by shedding light on the perceived value of using social media, consumers’ information search behaviour “then and now”, the advantages and disadvantages of social media use for decision-making, their trustworthiness and the factors that influence the consumers’ hotel decision-journey. The findings are conceptualised in an integrated theoretical model, entitled “hotel consumer decision-journey through social media”.

The study’s scope for qualitative in-depth insights into the “hotel consumer decision-journey through social media” asked for a compromise on a larger sample size and in turn the transferability of the theoretical model beyond service, hospitality and tourism consumer decision-making contexts.

This paper provides strategic implications for hospitality marketing and management for a better understanding of the influence of social media on the hotel customer decision journey. The study shows that a variety of social media with associated content sources and levels add to the complexity of hotel-related information search and decision behaviour. The developed framework not only helps hotel professionals understand consumers’ different levels (e.g. type of content, content source, content level) through which social media might influence decision-making. Various real-life scenarios presented also help practitioners understand the fine nuances of how consumers are influenced by social media and how this causes them to iteratively change their minds and make a final decision towards the rejection or selection of a hotel.

Consumers use social media for a wide spectrum of scenarios in tourism and hospitality, while the influence of social media on the consumers’ hotel decision-making process remains little understood. This study makes a theoretical contribution in that it addresses these existing gaps and bridges consumer behaviour and social media literature in the hotel context to shed light on the “hotel consumer decision journey through social media”. The core contribution is an integrated theoretical model and real-life scenarios that depict the impact of social media on the hotel decision-making.

This study aims to evaluate the role of social media on the hotel decision-making process of consumers during the evaluation stage of searching, identifying the alternatives and selecting a hotel in India. It will help the stakeholders in the hotel industry of India to make the social media platform more efficient for consumers by providing inputs on the factors consumers consider while making online hotel purchase.

This study involves an exploratory qualitative approach which includes 32 face-to-face, semi-structured, in-depth individual interviews with the social media platform users. The selection of interviewees for this study has been done on the basis of a non-random purposive sampling approach.

The findings reveal that social media plays an important role in affecting the way consumers search, decide and book hotels. It also suggests that social media helps consumers in collecting information about products and services, assessing alternatives and making their choices. It confirms that while negative facets exist, the positive benefits outweigh the negative aspects of using social media when selecting a hotel. The results also reveal the impact of circumstantial influence related to social media on hotel selection, on the basis of content source and the level of trust and accuracy in the content.

This study has some strategic implications for hospitality marketing and management related to a better understanding of the influence of social media on the hotel customer decision-making process. The study shows that a variety of social media with associated content sources and levels add to the complexity of hotel-related information search and decision behaviour.

The study makes a contribution by addressing the existing gaps and bridging the arena of consumer behaviour and social media literature in a hotel context and sheds light on how consumer decisions while selecting a hotel are influenced through social media. The core contribution is the generation of factors through in-depth interviews which are based on real-life scenarios relating to the influence of social media on hotel decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is, first, to review the main conceptual proposals for the study of information and communication technologies (ICT) in tourism companies, and second, to develop and validate a formative scale for measuring the degree of technological advancement in hotels, based on the perceptions of a sample of Spanish hotel guests.

After a literature review on the measurement of technology advancement in tourism, a formative scale for ICT advancement in hotels from the guest perspective is developed and validated through a multiple-indicator, multiple-cause model estimated through partial least squares regression with data from 197 Spanish hotel guests.

Results of the empirical research allow validating the proposed formative scale for measuring technological advancement in hotels, identifying solutions that hotel guests mainly associate with highly technified establishments.

The proposed and validated formative scale for measuring the degree of technological advancement of hotels is expected to enable the proposal of models where the relations between central variables in consumer behaviour research (e.g. value) and their dependent variables (e.g. satisfaction) may be influenced by guests’ perception of hotel technology.

This paper presents an initial attempt to develop a scale for measuring the degree of technological advancement of tourism companies, a topic that has received scant attention in acad`emic research in spite of the importance of technology in this industry.

本论文研究目的, 第一, 审阅关于旅游公司的信息通信技术（ICT）相关理论研究；第二, 以西班牙酒店客户为样本, 编制和验证酒店科技先进度的形成性量度。

本论文首先审阅了旅游产业中科技先进度测量的相关文献, 然后通过MIMIC模型编制了从酒店客户角度出发的测量酒店ICT的形成性量度, 最后通过197份西班牙酒店客户样本和偏最小二乘回归来验证模型。

本论文验证了衡量酒店科技先进度的形成性量度, 并且发现各种解决方案, 其酒店客户用来评价高科技酒店个体的标准。

编制和验证的衡量酒店科技先进度的形成性量度, 表明消费者行为学核心概念（比如, 价值）和消费者满意度之间, 是可以由酒店客户对酒店科技度的感知因素来影响的。

本论文首次编制衡量旅游公司科技先进度的量度。尽管科技在行业中被视为很重要, 但是这个话题在科研界受到较少的关注。

科技先进度、信息通信科技、形成性量度、反应性量度、酒店

研究论文

The purpose of this paper was to examine how small- and medium-sized hospitality organisations engage with social media and how social media data are used by their managers to inform business decisions.

A qualitative approach was used in this research in which interviews were conducted with top management, comprising the owners/directors and other key managers from small- and medium-sized organisations based in Penang, Malaysia. Fan and Gordon's (2014) categorisation of the social media data analysis process and Simon's (1995) concept of the interactive and diagnostic usage of data were used in the analysis of data.

The managers of small- and medium-sized hospitality organisations engage with social media for customer relationship management and the understanding of key main competitors. Social media is used to understand, build and manage relationships with current and potential customers; these activities are also linked to actions taken to protect a company's reputation. Even though, for the companies concerned, data gathering is still at the capture stage with no formal procedures and processes in place, the data are utilised in an interactive way to inform two areas’ major business decisions-making, i.e. those related to pricing and promotion and the strategic formulation and reorientation of the business.

The respondents of this study were mainly from smaller hospitality organisations. Hence, the insights gained are limited to the context of smaller hotels.

A significant number of social media studies within the hospitality sector have focussed on marketing aspects. This study explored the wider use of social media in the case of smaller hospitality organisations and how they compete and position themselves in the competitive hospitality industry.

The digital relationship between brand and users, and brand and endorsers has been analyzed from different angles. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how these three elements co-create online the brand personality of the firm, through user-generated content.

This study gathered data from the hotels’ websites, Facebook, Twitter and TripAdvisor accounts, examining the content posted by the hotel, by tourists and by the celebrity endorsing some of the hotels. To pursue the aims, the brand personality dimensions communicated online were assessed through content analysis for the global presence and for each social network by user typology to establish the alignment of brand personality traits communicated.

Digital communication was found to vary significantly between the hotels and tourists in different social networks. The amount of content created by tourists is significantly higher than the ones produced by the hotel. The sincerity dimension of brand personality was confirmed in both communications. However, tourists’ brand image impacts brand personality differently than the hotels themselves. Furthermore, an analysis of the influence of customers on social networks indicates that celebrity personality traits seem to impact on the image of a hotel brand.

This research can be used to help brand managers to understand better the digital co-branding with clients and celebrity, as well as to identify gaps in their brand personality strategy. It could also assist future researchers focusing on digital celebrity endorsement since few researchers have analyzed digital communication in different social networks.

O relacionamento das marcas com os consumidores e das marcas com os endorsers tem sido analisado por diversos prismas. O objectivo deste trabalho é analisar como estes três elementos se relacionam e co-criam a personalidade de marca da empresa, através dos conteúdos digitais criados por estes.

Neste trabalho foram recolhidos os conteúdos e comentários com origem na empresa, nos clientes e nos endorsers existentes nas páginas web oficiais dos hotéis, bem como no Facebook, Twitter e TripAdvisor. Através da análise de conteúdo foram determinadas as dimensões da personalidade de marca existentes em cada uma das redes e para cada tipo de utilizador, com vista a determinar a consistência e o alinhamento da comunicação de marca existente.

Os resultados desta investigação apontam para a existência de diferenças significativas entre a comunicação com origem nos hotéis e a originada pelos turistas, nas redes sociais: os turistas criam mais conteúdos que os hotéis; e as dimensões da personalidade de marca comunicadas não são coincidentes, embora a dimensão sinceridade tenha sido encontrada nos conteúdos de ambos. As evidências sugerem que os traços de personalidade do endorser tendem a influenciar a personalidade da marca.

Este trabalho ajuda os gestores a se consciencializarem da importância da co-criação da imagem de marca que ocorre no domínio digital, bem como permite que identifiquem as lacunas existentes na comunicação da personalidade de marca das suas empresas. Este trabalho pode ser útil também para os investigadores que queiram analisar o papel das celebridades na comunicação digital.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of revenue management (RM) studies that focus on information technology (IT) and consumer behavior published between 2008 and 2018.

In total, 112 articles published in 17 journals were identified and analyzed.

This study shows the importance of IT and RM and focuses on the consumer perspective. It also emphasizes that technology is not the enemy of humans: it complements and adds value to their existing jobs.

Book chapters and conference proceedings related to IT and RM were not included in this study. Besides, only journal papers published in English were included in the study. The categorizing of subjects can be seen as subjective.

This study helps researchers discover articles from 2008 to 2018 and helps hospitality executives interested in RM technologies from the demand side to use these findings in their business environment.

Based on the interaction between service providers (hotels) and users (consumers) on IT and RM platforms, the paper identified eight key components that have been relevant over the past decade.

本论文旨在介绍2008年至2018年之间的财务管理（RM）研究中涉及信息技术（IT）和消费者行为的文献综述。

本研究样本为发表在17个期刊的共112篇文章。

研究结果指出了IT和RM的重要性, 以及对消费者方面的重视。此外, 本研究还指出了技术不是人类的敌人– 技术能够弥补以及对人类原有的工作增添价值。

本研究未将涉及IT和RM的书和会议文章纳入样本。此外, 只有英文的期刊文章构成研究样本。对研究样本的主题归类是主观性的。

本论文梳理了2008年至2018年发表的文献, 以及帮助酒店实践者们对RM科技从需求方面更了解其商务环境。

本论文基于服务供应者（酒店）和用户（消费者）在IT和RM交互平台上, 提出了过去十年中相关的八大关键因素。

Vloggers (video bloggers) have emerged as a new phenomenon in social media marketing, especially in the hotel industry, where user-generated reviews can strongly influence purchase decisions. Therefore, this paper aims to build an electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) adoption model (EAM) that incorporates source evaluation attributes (information quality, major influence and source credibility), trust in eWOM and eWOM intention (EWOMI) and booking intention and investigate the moderation of negative reviews from vloggers on relationships in the EAM.

This paper conducted two studies (n_s1 = 446, n_s2 = 374). The data were collected through an online and face-to-face survey with an experimental design. This paper conducted covariance-based structural equation model to examine main effects and applied a multiple-group analysis to test the moderating effect of vlogger reviews.

Three attributes of source evaluation are important predictors of trust in eWOM, which positively impact eWOM and booking intention. EWOMI also positively affects booking intention. Moreover, the negative review of vloggers can lower the effects of information quality on trust and of trust on EWOMI in Study 1 and on hotel booking intention in Study 2.

This study builds the EAM model for the hospitality context and provides novel insights into the moderating effects of vloggers’ negative reviews on the relationships in the EAM.

Vlogger（视频博主）已成为社交媒体营销中的一种新现象, 尤其是在酒店行业, 用户生成的评论可以强烈影响购买决策。 因此, 本文旨在建立一个电子口碑 (eWOM) 采用意向模型（EAM）, 该模型包含来源评估属性（信息质量、主要影响力和来源可信度）、对电子口碑的信任、eWOM intention (EWOMI) 和预订意愿, 以及 (2) 调查视频博主对 EAM 中关系的负面评论的调节。

当前的研究进行了两项研究（n_s1 = 446, n_s2 = 374）。 数据是通过带有实验设计的在线和面对面调查收集的。 本文使用 CB-SEM 来检查主要效果, 并应用多组分析来测试 vlogger 评论的调节效果。

来源评估的三个属性是网络口碑信任度的重要预测指标, 对网络口碑和预订意愿产生积极影响。 EWOMI 也对预订意愿产生积极影响。 此外, vlogger 的负面评论可以降低信息质量对信任的影响, 以及信任对研究 1 中的 EWOMI 和研究 2 中的酒店预订意愿的影响。

这项研究为酒店环境建立了 EAM 模型, 并提供了关于视频博主负面评论对 EAM 中关系的调节作用的新颖见解。

Despite its volume, the academic research on the impact of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) on tourism and hospitality consumer behaviour is fragmented and largely limited to investigating a small scope of its impact. The purpose of this paper is to bridge this gap by synthesising the existing literature, providing a conceptual framework for the various dimensions of this impact.

This paper is based on the meta-synthesis and a critical conceptual analysis of relevant academic literature identified using a keyword search of papers via the Web of Science and Scopus databases, followed by a snowballing process comprising tracking the citations to the resources referred to in the identified papers.

This conceptual analysis illustrates how the full spectrum of the impact of eWOM on tourist behaviour spans well beyond the limited scope traditionally focussed on by tourism and hospitality researchers. This scope, encompassing multiple cognitive, normative and affective dimensions, is illustrated in an evidence-based conceptual framework proposed in this paper, providing a systematic tool to identify the less-studied aspects of this important phenomenon.

This paper synthesises the large and fragmented body of literature on eWOM and proposes a novel conceptual framework, illustrating the vast scope of the various cognitive, affective and normative mechanisms through which eWOM affects consumers’ choice of tourism and hospitality products. Furthermore, this paper provides a synthesis of the state-of-the-art of research in this field, highlights the existing gaps and provides researchers with a systematic tool to identify pathways towards breaking the status-quo in progressing beyond the current boundaries of academic research in this field.

游客感知对清真旅游目的地的影响：结构模型分析

尽管有大量研究, 但有关网络口碑eWOM对旅游业和酒店业消费者行为的影响的学术研究仍是零散的, 并且在很大程度上只限于调查其影响的一小部分。本文的目的是通过综合现有文献来弥合这种差距, 为这种影响的各个方面提供概念框架。

本文基于元合成法和对相关学术文献的关键性, 概念性分析。这些文献是通过Web of Science和Scopus数据库对文章进行关键字搜索而确定的。随后是滚雪球式搜索过程, 该过程包括跟踪对已识别文章中引用的资源的引用。

这项概念分析阐述了eWOM对游客行为的影响范围如何远远超出了旅游和酒店业研究人员传统上关注的有限范围。这一范围是基于有理论依据的的概念框架提出的, 并涵盖多个认知, 规范和情感的维度。此范围为识别这一重要且缺乏研究的现象提供了系统的工具。

本文综合了有关eWOM的大量零散文献, 并提出了一个新颖的概念框架, 阐明了eWOM影响消费者选择旅游和酒店产品的各种认知, 情感和规范机制的范围。此外, 本文提供了该领域最新的研究综述, 突出了现有的差距, 并为研究人员提供了系统的识别打破现状的途径, 以超越当前学术界在这个领域的研究局限。

关键字 电子口碑, eWOM, WOM, 酒店, 旅游, 口碑

研究论文

El Boca a Boca Electrónico en el Comportamiento del Consumidor Turístico y Hotelero: Estado del Arte

A pesar del gran volumen de investigación académica sobre el impacto de eWOM en el comportamiento del consumidor turístico y hotelero, esta se encuentra fragmentada y en gran medida se limita a investigar un pequeño alcance de su impacto. El propósito de este artículo, es cerrar esta brecha sintetizando la literatura existente y proporcionando un marco conceptual para las diversas dimensiones de este impacto.

Este documento se basa en un análisis metasíntesis crítico y conceptual de la literatura relevante académica identificada, mediante una búsqueda de artículos por palabras claves a través de las bases de datos de Web of Science y Scopus, seguido de un proceso de “bola de nieve” que comprende el seguimiento de las citas de los recursos mencionados en los artículos identificados.

Este análisis conceptual, ilustra cómo el espectro total del impacto de eWOM en el comportamiento turístico se extiende mucho más allá del limitado alcance que tradicionalmente han realizado investigadores del turismo y hoteles. Este nuevo alcance, que abarca múltiples dimensiones cognitivas, normativas y afectivas, se ilustra en un marco conceptual basado en la evidencia propuesta en este documento, que proporciona una herramienta sistemática para identificar los aspectos menos estudiados de este importante fenómeno.

Este documento sintetiza la gran cantidad de literatura fragmentada sobre eWOM y propone un marco conceptual novedoso, que ilustra el amplio alcance de los diversos mecanismos cognitivos, afectivos y normativos a través de los cuales eWOM afecta la elección de los consumidores de productos turísticos y hoteleros. Además, este documento proporciona una síntesis del estado de la investigación en este campo, destaca las brechas existentes y brinda a los investigadores una herramienta sistemática para identificar vías para romper el statu quo en el progreso más allá de los límites académicos actuales en este campo.

Boca a boca electrónica, eWOM, WOM, Industria hoteleram, Turismo, Boca a boca

– Trabajo de investigación

The objective of the research is to explore the importance of online reputation management through some core concepts: technologies and entrepreneurship. Specifically, the research will explore how in a tourism ecosystem context, it is strategically relevant through the use of Big Data Analytics (BDA) to manage and improve online reputation management. An emphasis will also be placed on the concept of entrepreneurship and dynamic capabilities. Finally, the research also explores empowerment issue to shed some considerations on the development of tourists' online reviews.

This paper aims to provide a valid insight into consumers' minds while considering word of mouth (WOM), brand image and uniqueness as independent variables while considering the tourism industry as the primary stakeholder.

The study adopts qualitative research methods and data collected from 1,033 respondents using convenience sampling methodology. The data are collected from different tourists spots in China and Pakistan. The PROCESS macro was utilized in this study using SPSS version 25.0 to inspect the impacts by using Model 4 and the conditional effects indirectly by utilizing Model 14.

Customer's intimacy, search for novel and unexplored destinations highlight WOM interactions and perceived service value. Service value, interactional justice and professional attitude of hotel management mediated all the given relationships significantly. The brand image does not mediate any significant associations. Perceived service value and brand image predict customer's loyalty, and WOM is the direct measure of their intentions, and these variables are market trend indicators. A tourist's response toward different destinations is described in this study with comparative analysis of Chinese and Pakistani tourists. The study results showed a significantly positive relationship between hotel management professional behavior, customer's loyalty, customer's intimacy and WOM.

The recruited population might not be represented as the broader and larger visitor population, resulting in restricting establishing tactics. Moreover, this study's results provide significant insight into a tourism industry, hence providing a chance to manage customer loyalty better.

This study contributes significantly to the body of knowledge and provides remarkable insight from the managerial perspective. Interactional justice results in significant value for hotel management directors and top management, front desk staff and operatives and front level employees and managers. Consumer sensitivity of fairness in interpersonal dealings calls for behavioral changes in frontline employees, especially those directly dealing with hotel visitors. Hotel staff and management should formulate a system to deal with the demands and needs of visitors. It should describe the rights and obligations of visitors and ensure that each customer is treated equally and with respect. Customers should be motivated to read the survey questionnaires kept in their rooms and offer their views on the services provided. This strategy might increase the customers' sense of empowerment and leading to notions of fairness in individual encounters.

This study provides an insight into the customer's minds while considering essential variables that include WOM, brand image, perceived service value and uniqueness.