Search results

Online reputation management (ORM) plays a significant role in the tourism industry. Tourists are more and more interested to express their opinions about their experiences/satisfaction not only with their friends but also on social media. ORM is largely used not only by tourist destinations but also by other companies operating in the tourism industry. This chapter aims to draw attention to the importance of intermediaries in tourism, their reputation in general, and especially their ORM and its specifics. This contribution also characterizes different types of intermediaries and their different roles in the distribution process of tourism services. These roles are important and can be even more significant in the “new normal” post-COVID-19 time. In the scientific literature and research, there is not much attention given to intermediaries as a whole and even less to their ORM and its specific solutions. But practical contributions can be found. Due to the specific activities and roles of different types of intermediaries, also their reputation is influenced not only by tourists but also by their suppliers. Their ORM has also some specifics and needs specific solutions. Their reputation is depending not only on customers' satisfaction with their own services but also on the reputation of tourism service providers, whose services they offer and mediate either individually or in the form of their own product, e.g., package tours. Specific attention in this chapter is given to intermediaries such as OTAs (Online Travel Agencies/Agents) and tour operators. At some time, these two types of intermediaries help to increase the reputation of tourism services providers, e.g., hotels. The chapter describes the situation in the field of intermediaries with a conceptual model, their ORM, and summarizes its specifics.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The study shows that CRM drives a firm’s online reputation management strategy. CRM usage has a positive effect on brand equity. However, only under the right circumstances online reputation management enhances brand equity.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists, and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The online shopping behavior is the outcome of the variety of attribution from product/ service offering to internet experience. The present study attempts to develop a complete product/service offering by exploring and examining the different combinations of online shopping attributes to provide the customized experience. Therefore, this study aims to fill the gap of customer desired experience and present scenario in online shopping behavior.

The exploration of attributes pertaining to online shopping behavior was done by seeking theoretical support from different technology adoption theories/models and the Delphi technique, exercised with active participants of online and offline shopping. The theoretical and experience shared attributes were devised and social desirability scale (SDS) was used for eliminating the social desirability bias. Further, the questionnaire was administered online and offline during mall intercept. The Conjoint analysis was used to investigate the relative importance and utilities of the attributes and its levels individually and compositely at different levels.

In the context, brand loyalty, online reputation management and Web interactivity were found most relavant followed by e-WOM, perceived risk and price. The specific levels of attributes such as taking consumer advice, search engine optimization (SEO), perception-based interactivity, consumer message boards, product risk and discount pricing were the crucial in motivating the customers for online shopping. This research affords the avenue for the marketers to motivate and delight consumers to retribalize by the way of “e-tribalizing.”

The current study was conducted in confined geographical locations and limited in sample size; thus, the issue of generalization may prevail, but forthcoming researchers may exercise the techniques with better probabilistic sampling technique. The mass customization of the website features by comparing attribute orientation of customers around websites was recommended with the third-party certification to reduce the consumers’ perceived risk during online shopping. Finally, the different levels, such as Facebook fan page in ORM and Everyday Low Price (EDLP) in pricing may be considered for the future research work.

The research studies on online shopping behavior with Web interactivity, e-WOM, perceived risk, brand loyalty, ORM and price using a decompositional technique are scant. This study persuades the customers to go for online shopping by putting them in the almost real-time purchasing scenario. The study confirmed the need of people to retribalize through e-tribalization by the way of customization for the masses in the context of online shopping.

The aim of the chapter is to examine the importance and use of reviews in the marketing communication of selected spa tourism enterprises on the Internet. The subject of the research are reviews as an important part of the online reputation of spa tourism enterprises and the object of the research is marketing communication on the Internet. The chapter focuses on spas located in Slovakia. The primary sources are the results of a quantitative survey conducted by standardized observation of the websites and profiles of all spa tourism enterprises in Slovakia under study on the social networks Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube based on predetermined criteria. At the same time, the results of the primary survey are conducted by the method of questioning using the technique of structured interviews. The chapter uses theoretical research methods such as analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, and generalization. The chapter presents the results of qualitative research using the Sankey diagram, processed by Atlas.ti software. The results of the research point to the fact that spa tourism enterprises in Slovakia use their own websites and social networks to communicate in the online environment, where they monitor both positive and negative reviews. However, they often do not work with reviews systematically enough and do not make use of standardized procedures and available technologies that would enable them to manage their online reputation more effectively.

The chapter proposes to investigate online reputation of hospitality brands and its measurements. Brand reputation is generally defined as an overall appraisal of a company by its stakeholders, which is the result of the company's past actions and predictions about the company's future (Ferguson, Deephouse, & Ferguson, 2000). Being viewed as the opinion shared among a group of stakeholders (Dowling, 2008), it plays an important role in the tourism industry. With the progress of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), reviews and user-generated contents of destinations and of hospitality companies together with the related emerging brand reputation can influence consumers' behaviors and choices. Brand reputation analysis could be more useful in the hospitality brand management when integrated with brand image and brand identity analysis, mainly because in tourism businesses and destinations, brands are typically affected by an inherent fragility determined by the service nature of products (Casarin, 1996). According to Biel (1991), the meanings that consumers assign to a brand are synthesized into brand associations formed by the components perceived to underlie the brand's image. As well as brand reputation, strong, positive and unique associations reinforce a brand and increase its equity that requires significant internal brand identity efforts, which should create a corresponding brand image through integration in overall marketing programmes (Keller, 2003). It makes sense to develop an analytical research approach that compares online brand reputation (OBR) with brand association matching as a measure of the alignment between brand identity and brand image in hospitality companies. This comparative analysis emerging from brand reputation, brand image and brand identity analysis can reveal divergent situations (i.e., high brand reputation and low brand association matching) and orient brand managers in reviewing online brand communication. Brand reputation and brand image analysis will be contextualized in an online community as a social setting that is considered to be a new type of market (Muniz & O'Guinn, 2001). We focus on hospitality online communities populated by consumers and other actors such as influencers and bloggers: their brand perception could be separately compared with brand identity that we will extract from company communications including presentational information and brand-related press releases found on websites, nonfinancial narrative from annual reports, and interviews with managers published in mainstream media sources. In our analysis we will focalize on a cluster of luxury hospitality companies integrating a netnographic and text-mining techniques. We will use both the techniques in order to (1) extract and study brand associations in terms of brand reputation, brand image, and brand identity; (2) develop indicators of brand reputation and brand association matching; and (3) discuss their utility in the management of the hospitality company brands.

Organizations can benefit significantly from the growing capabilities of the internet. As the Web facilitates purchasing and reduces the costs of marketing, companies can connect with customers through the use of storytelling. This study aims to examine how small businesses leverage the use of storytelling to engage with customers and drive revenue and online reputation management.

Both qualitative and quantitative insights are offered in two studies. In Study 1, interviews were conducted with business owners to explore the efforts made by their companies to connect and engage with consumers online. Study 2 builds on the findings from Study 1 and uses survey methodology to test a model which outlines how storytelling can foster engagement with customers.

Results indicate that story content is positively related to emotional content and the personal connection an individual feels toward a firm’s products. Furthermore, user-generated content moderates the relationship between story content creation and personal connections. Findings also demonstrate that personal connection is essential to customer engagement. Ultimately, engagement can lead to revenue generation from social commerce as well as increased reputation management activity.

This research demonstrates how small businesses can use the power of storytelling to immerse and transport audiences in such a way that customer beliefs and attitudes toward the firm are impacted in a favorable way. By telling its brand story well, firms have the power to increase the value of their products.

To test the applicability of the user-generated content (UGC) derived from social travel network sites for online reputation management, the purpose of this study is to analyze the spatial clustering of the reputable hotels (based on the TripAdvisor Best-Value indicator) and reputable outdoor seating restaurants (based on ranking indicator).

This study used data mining techniques to obtain the UGC from TripAdvisor. The Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering method based on algorithm (HDBSCAN) was used for robust cluster analysis.

The findings of this study revealed that best value (BV) hotels and reputable outdoor seating restaurants are most likely to be located in and around the central districts of the urban tourist destinations where population and economic activities are denser. BV hotels' spatiotemporal cluster analysis formed clusters of different sizes, densities and shape patterns.

This study showed that reputable hotels and restaurants (H&Rs) are concentrated within districts near historic city centers. This should be an impetus for applied research on urban investment environments.

The findings would be rational guidance for entrepreneurs and potential investors on the most attractive tourism investment environments.

There has been a lack of studies focusing on analyzing the spatial clustering of the H&Rs using UGC. Therefore, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to map and analyze the spatiotemporal clustering patterns of reputable hotels (TripAdvisor BV indicator) and restaurants (ranking indicator). As such, this study makes a significant methodological contribution to urban tourism research by showing pattern change in H&Rs clustering using data mining and the HDBSCAN algorithm.

为了测试社交旅游网站 (STNS) 的用户生成内容 (UGC) 对在线声誉管理 (ORM) 的适用性, 本研究分析了知名酒店的空间聚类（基于 TripAdvisor 最佳价值指标) 和信誉良好的户外座位 (ODS) 餐厅(基于排名指标)。

该研究使用数据挖掘技术从 TripAdvisor 获取 UGC。 基于（HDBSCAN）算法的分层基于密度的空间聚类方法用于鲁棒聚类分析。

调查结果显示, 最具价值 (BV) 酒店和信誉良好的 ODS 餐厅最有可能位于人口和经济活动较为密集的城市旅游目的地的中心区及其周边地区。 BV 酒店的时空聚类分析形成了不同大小、密度和形状模式的聚类。

目前的文献扔缺乏专注于分析利用 UGC 的酒店和餐厅 (H&R) 空间聚类的研究。 因此, 本研究首次绘制并分析了知名酒店（TripAdvisor BV 指标）和餐厅（排名指标）的时空聚类模式。 因此, 本研究通过利用数据挖掘和 HDBSCAN 算法显示 H&Rs 聚类的模式变化, 为城市旅游研究做出了重要的方法论贡献。

这项研究表明, 著名的 H&R 集中在历史悠久的市中心附近的地区。 这应该是对城市投资环境的应用研究的推动力。

研究结果将为企业家和潜在投资者提供最具吸引力的旅游投资环境的理性指导。

Online technologies have, in recent times, revolutionized the process of relationship building between firms and their customers. Nonetheless, there is a limited focus and theorization when it comes to explaining the link between online relationship marketing (ORM) activities and their impact on firm relationship marketing (RM) objectives. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the signaling role of ORM activities in generating online trust and customer loyalty, through the lens of the signaling theory.

Data for the study were gathered through a survey of 429 Ghanaian retail bank customers. Results were analyzed using structural equation modeling techniques.

The paper highlights the signaling role of engagement and interactivity online in influencing banks’ RM outcomes per the signaling theory. It concludes that bank’s online relationship activities, over and above the online tools utilized, need to communicate appropriate and useful signals in order to positively influence online trust and loyalty among customers.

The study, in its uniqueness, utilizes the signaling theory to explain the role and impact of online RM activities in the banking industry.

This paper aims to examine the connection between information system (IS) availability and operational risk losses and the capital requirements. As most businesses today become increasingly dependent on information technology (IT) services for continuous operations, IS availability is becoming more important for most industries. However, the banking sector has particular sector-specific concerns that go beyond the direct and indirect losses resulting from unavailability. According to the first pillar of the Basel II accord, IT outages in the banking sector lead to increased capital requirements and thus create an additional regulatory cost, over and above the direct and indirect costs of an outage.

A Bayesian belief network (BBN) with nodes representing causal factors has been used for identification of the factors with the greatest influence on IS availability, thus helping in investment decisions.

Using the BBN model for making IS availability-related decisions action (e.g. bringing a causal factor up to the best practice level), organization, according to the presented mapping table, would have less operational risk events related to IS availability. This would have direct impact by decreasing losses, related to those events, as well as to decrease the capital requirements, prescribed by the Basel II accord, for covering operational risk losses.

An institution using the proposed framework can use the mapping table to see which measures for improving IS availability will have a direct impact on operational risk events, thus improving operational risk management.

The authors mapped the factors causing unavailability of IS system to the rudimentary IT risk management framework implied by the Basel II regulations and, thus, established an otherwise absent link from the IT availability management to operational risk management according to the Basel II framework.