Search results

The purpose of this paper is to advance in research on consumer psychology of hospitality, since it investigates how online search behavior of users (particularly, information search and choice) is influenced by the opinions of other people in a new context characterized by the generalized use of Web 2.0 applications.

Empirical research was carried out in the hotel sector in Iberian Peninsula, where two Web 2.0 applications are especially relevant for users: the review Web sites and the hotel interactive Web sites. A qualitative method (in-depth interviews with hotel managers) and a quantitative technique (personal surveys to a sample of 830 users) were used to conduct this research.

The results indicates that the perceived influence on behavior of the user-generated content on these Web 2.0 applications is determined, in both cases, by the value of the information, the credibility of the sources and the degree of similarity between the user and the creators of content.

Firms should have an active presence in the review Web sites and the hotel interactive Web sites, and use these platforms for market research and communication. Firms should engage users to post content, support their credibility and facilitate the evaluation of the content generators’ similarity.

This paper is the first study in the hospitality literature that develops and empirically tests an integrative model explaining the perceived influence on behavior of user-generated content on Web 2.0 applications.

User‐generated media (UGM) like YouTube, MySpace, and Wikipedia have become tremendously popular over the last few years. The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical framework for explaining the appeal of UGM.

This paper is mainly theoretical due to a relative lack of empirical evidence. After an introduction on the emergence of UGM, this paper investigates in detail how and why people use UGM, and what factors make UGM particularly appealing, through a uses and gratifications perspective. Finally, the key elements of this study are summarized and the future research directions about UGM are discussed.

This paper argues that individuals take with UGM in different ways for different purposes: they consume contents for fulfilling their information, entertainment, and mood management needs; they participate through interacting with the content as well as with other users for enhancing social connections and virtual communities; and they produce their own contents for self‐expression and self‐actualization. These three usages are separate analytically but interdependent in reality. This paper proposes a model to describe such interdependence. Furthermore, it argues that two usability attributes of UGM, “easy to use” and “let users control,” enable people to perform the aforementioned activities efficiently so that people can derive greater gratification from their UGM use.

UGM are an extremely important topic in new media scholarship, and this study represents the first step toward understanding the appeal of UGM in an integrated way.

User-generated content and online reviews are highly relevant in purchase decision in the hospitality sector, including restaurants, but there is a lack of knowledge about the effect of sharing pictures in this context. This study aims to focus on the relevance of user-generated photos in online platforms for restaurants’ selection.

A research was conducted with a sample of 319 residents of Porto region, who had at least one meal in a restaurant over the 30 days before the answer of the survey and had searched online to select the restaurant.

The results show that while doing online research about restaurants, it is important for potential consumers to find pictures of food and physical evidences of restaurants generated by other users. Findings also show that consumers find user-generated photos especially at websites of reviews, although the importance of restaurant owned platforms, such as official social media pages and websites.

The research results appeal restaurant managers to understand the importance of user-generated photos in online platforms by promoting photo sharing in their restaurants with appropriate marketing activities for that purpose.

This paper expands the state-of-the-art about the importance of user-generated content, focusing on the importance of photos from restaurants shared by consumers in online platforms.

用户生成内容和在线评论, 与酒店行业, 包括饭店业中的购买决策是密不可分的。但是在这个研究领域里, 对于分享照片的影响力还尚未可知。本论文旨在研究在线平台中的用户生成照片对于饭店选择的影响。

本论文采用问卷采样形式, 问卷样本为在30天之内通过上网搜索选择饭店并且就餐至少一次的葡萄牙波尔图地区居民, 有效样本数量为319份。

人们在上网搜索饭店时, 找到食物图片和其他用户生成的有关饭店评论对于消费者决策有着至关重要的作用。本论文结果还表明, 尽管饭店运营的在线平台比如官方社交媒体网页和网站等很重要, 但是消费者在决策中最考虑的因素是那些评论型网站, 消费者会更倾向于找到用户生成的图片来帮助他们的消费决策。

本论文结果对于饭店管理者理解在线平台的用户生成图片的重要性有着很大的启示。本论文建议其管理者应该使用适当的营销手段来促使自己饭店的相关照片得到用户的分享。

本论文拓展了用户生成内容的现有认识, 研究了饭店照片被消费者分享到在线平台的重要性。

线上口碑效应 e-WOM、在线平台 、在线评论 、照片分享 、饭店管理 、社交媒体 、用户生成内容

研究论文

This paper aims to present innovative information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure specifically designed and optimized for the tourism sector. The case presented, “La Valle del Pensare lungo il corso del Potenza”, has been conceived with the aim of providing a digital infrastructure to ten municipalities in the Marche Region (Italy), nestled among the valley of the Potenza River. This research project is aimed at developing an important communication system that facilitates the tourist routes of mining attractions and specific thematic routes across the territory, promoting historical centers, cultural heritage, green areas and interesting places.

“La Valle del Pensare” information system has the main feature of being scalable and multi-purpose, as the contents can be managed and conveyed through the website, app mobile, totem touch screen and standard tourist signage. It is integrated and modular and allows to manage multiple information, ensuring an interoperable and multi-channel approach. It is designed for small municipalities in the province of Macerata to connect the territory’s resources and activities through a network.

This work represents an important communication system, i.e. innovative ICT infrastructure that facilitates the tourist routes of mining attractions and specific thematic routes across the territory. Thanks to the collection of user-generated data, the platform allows monitoring of usage statistics and performances. In this way, the municipalities can infer useful information about user’s preferences and needs. The paper also discusses how “La Valle del Pensare” gives identity to the territory, which is not identified as a simple summation of the Common, but as a recognizable system that intends to implement the level of competitiveness through the creation of a real territorial logo able to identify vocations and specificity of the Valley of the Potenza.

The value of the project lies in the ICT system, able to convey information at different scales, providing the users with updated contents; at the same time, administrations can constantly monitor its performances, being able to infer useful information about tourists’ needs, habits and preferences. The main contributions are the creation of a single cloud-based architecture for the management of multiple multi- media contents, to be exploited in various platforms; the design of a unique content management system used by several small municipalities of a same territory; the monitoring user’s preferences and needs by collecting users’ generated data; and the analysis of meaningful statistics about the tourists, tested and verified in real scenario with real users.

本论文旨在介绍针对旅游行业而设计和优化的创新型ICT架构。本论文讨论案例题为“La Valle del Pensare lung oil corso del Potenza”, 主要为马尔凯大区（意大利）的10个直辖市, 位于Potenza河域山谷中, 提供数码基础架构。此研究项目主要是为了构建一条重要通信体系来帮助开发矿场景点的旅游线路和整个地区的特殊专题线路, 以宣传历史中心、文化遗产、绿色区域、和各种景点。

“La Valle del Pensare”信息系统具有规模化和多样性的特点, 其系统内容可以通过网站、移动app、图腾触摸屏、和标准旅游标牌等方式进行管理和传播。此系统采用一体化设计、以模块为单位, 这样使得多种信息方便管理, 确保交互链接可操作性和多渠道性。此外, 这个系统还专门为了马尔凯大区的小城市设计, 使得该区域的资源通过网络得到整合链接。

本论文介绍了重要通信系统, 即创新型ICT架构, 来帮助开发矿场景点的旅游线路和整个地区的特殊专题线路。 得益于用户生成数据（user-generated data）, 该平台还能监控使用情况和效果, 从而使用该系统的城市可以推测出用户偏好和需求等有用数据。本论文还讨论了“La Valle del Pensare”如何标识地区身份代名词, 这个代名词不等同于共和（the Common）的简单总和, 而是一个醒目的系统, 使得其通过树立真正的区域商标而具有竞争力, 在Potenza谷中占有旅行度假的一席之地。

本论文的重大价值在于其ICT系统, 能够在不同领域传播信息, 向用户提供更新信息:与此同时, 管理当局能够实时监控其系统性能以及推测旅游需求、习惯、偏好等有用信息。本论文重要贡献在于:i）搭建单个云平台基础的多媒体内容管理架构, 能够在多个渠道上运行;ii）设计特殊内容管理系统, 服务于同一区域的多个小城市;iii）通过搜集用户生成数据来监控用户偏好和需求;iv）分析有关游客的数据, 使用真实游客数据来实地测试和验证。

The suddenness, urgency and social publicity of emergency events lead to great impacts on public life. The deep analysis of emergency events can provide detailed and comprehensive information for the public to get trends of events timely. With the development of social media, users prefer to express opinions on emergency events online. Thus, massive public opinion information of emergencies has been generated. Hence, this paper aims to conduct multidimensional mining on emergency events based on user-generated contents, so as to obtain finer-grained results.

This paper conducted public opinion analysis via fine-grained mining. Specifically, public opinion about an emergency event was collected as experimental data. Secondly, opinion mining was conducted to get users’ opinion polarities. Meanwhile, users’ information was analysed to identify impacts of users’ characteristics on public opinion.

The experimental results indicate that public opinion is mainly negative in emergencies. Meanwhile, users in developed regions are more active in expressing opinions. In addition, male users, especially male users with high influence, are more rational in public opinion expression.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to identify public opinion in emergency events from multiple dimensions, which can get in-detail differences of users’ online expression.

The paper aims at dealing with the role of users in the creation (or curation) and distribution of digital contents. User generated contents (UGCs) refer to a variety of media such as Wikis, question-answer databases, digital video, blogging, podcasting, forums, review sites, social networking, social media and mobile phone photograph. It attempts assessing their potential role as co-innovators. The paper follows the progressive creation of a new space for users, tracking its specific forms in each subsector of the media and content industries. Each subsector reveals a disruption in the production and circulation of new content.

The paper is based on desk research, a review of literature, review of the technical journals, and analysis of annual reports. The paper is part of an on-going research project on media and content industries.

The paper argued that since 2007 (release of iPhone and Kindle) the landscape went through a dramatic change, scaling up. It illustrates how the entire value chain of content (production/distribution/consumption) has opened up. The amount of UGC produced triggered a qualitative jump, ushering in new modes of interaction between the customers and creators, without necessarily turning the consumer into a full-fledge producer. The UGC model adds another source of production, thereby increasing diversity, ushering in new ways for talent scouting. It reveals various forms of co-creation and the role of a community model while also showing its limits.

This paper concentrates on digital media and does not deal with any other aspect such as knowledge sharing (Wikis). The paper does not cover the reactions of traditional industry players to UGC (some elements are given for newspaper), neither possible policy and regulatory responses The paper relies mostly on reports from news agencies, consultancies or annual reports from companies so as to delineate the main trends.

It shows that the role of customers did change within this context. The new channels offer novel ways to produce, curate and disseminate contents. It offers a range of examples from different industries.

The paper documents the participation of consumers in the production of content. it hints at the evolution of labour, alludes to the issue of diversity and of creativity, but does not address other societal issues.

Some reports were devoted to UGC in 2007 (OECD) and 2008 (Idate-IVIR-TNO) but in spite of the major changes that took place over the past decade, the research has been scarce, or has concentrated on a specific segment of the media industry. The paper is trying to offer a comprehensive overview of the various segments. Each sub-segment of the media industry illustrates a specific dimension.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise and discuss the possible insights that can be generated for product development by analysing the user-generated content available from various social media platforms.

The paper reviews the role of user generated content in developing products and its features (e.g. appearance and shape). It delineates the directions in which the relationship between social media content and customer oriented concepts evolve while developing successful new products.

The review and arguments presented in this paper suggest that the social media approach adds more value than the traditional approaches for obtaining insights about the products. Availability of users’ opinions and information about existing products provide insights for the improvement in the product design process. Co-creation and self-construal are important components that are based on customer engagement and customer behaviour, respectively, in the product design and development.

As social media creates new ways of communication with users, businesses can include users into the product development process to improve and refine their products or for making the next generation of products.

This paper suggests a new approach in getting useful insights about the products from user-generated contents. This way of using social media helps businesses to move forward from the traditional product development paradigms.

This paper aims to examine the recommendation system of the video-sharing website YouTube to study how control of users is effected on online platforms.

This paper conceptualises algorithmic systems as protocols – technological and social infrastructures that both facilitate and govern interactions between autonomous actors (Galloway and Thacker, 2004, 2007). It adopts a netnographic approach (Kozinets, 2002) to study not only the formal, technological systems of the platform but also the systems as they were made sense of, understood and enacted upon by actors. It relies both on information as revealed by the organisation itself, as well as discussions between lay users in online forums and press coverage.

The results of this study indicate that the ways in which platforms selectively facilitate interactions between users constitute a form of control. While maintaining the appearance of an open and neutral marketplace, interactions on the platform are in fact highly structured. The system relies on the surveillance of user interactions to rapidly identify and propagate marketable contents, so as to maximise user “engagement” and ad revenue. The systems place few demands or restrictions on individual users, instead control is effected in a probabilistic fashion, over the population of users as a whole, so as to, in aggregate, accomplish organisational goal.

This paper contributes to the literature on accounting and control practices in online spaces, by extending the notion of control beyond overt rankings and evaluations, to the underlying technical and social infrastructures that facilitate and shape interactions.

Citizen journalism practices through social networking sites are increasingly becoming an imperative source of public opinion formation. Given the increase in the volume of information sharing on social media during COVID-19, this study aims to grasp the largely unknown interaction of the individual’s trust in citizen journalism practices and public perception formulation. Drawing on this idea, the study has twofold objectives: first, to examine the influence of user-generated information about economic policies of government during COVID-19 as the antecedent of public perception about government performance and second, to identify the moderating role of trust in citizen journalism practices during COVID-19 through social networking sites.

The study used a survey method and a sample of 464 adults were collected through an online administrated questionnaire.

The findings specify that user-generated content that is pro-government economic policies during COVID-19 positively influenced the perception of government performance. On the other hand, user-generated information that criticized government economic policies had a negative influence on public perception.

This study seeks to intensify the understudied phenomenon of how nature and source of the information could interact to influence one’s information processing during a crisis such as pandemic COVID-19. Furthermore, only a little research has been conducted in this area focusing on two mechanisms, namely; citizen journalism and trust in social media user-generated information about prevailing economic insecurities during crisis provided through citizen journalism.

Social shopping website (SSW) introduce the social side into the shopping process, thus making “window” shopping or browsing more interesting for customers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate customer online browsing experience and its antecedents (i.e. information quality and social interaction) and consequences (i.e. urge to buy impulsively and continuous browsing intention) in the context of SSW.

A survey questionnaire was distributed to visitors of online SSW to collect data, and partial least squares technology was used to test the research model.

The results of this study reveal that three types of web browsing, namely, utilitarian browsing, hedonic browsing and social browsing, take place in a SSW. The unique factors of SSW, namely, the quality of user generated contents and social interaction are critical for facilitating customers’ browsing experiences. Furthermore, the findings reveal that hedonic browsing experience is found to be the most salient factor influencing customers’ urge to buy impulsively and continuance intention.

The findings suggest that practitioners, such as designers and managers of SSW should give special attention to the benefits of browsing activity to convert web browsers into impulse purchasers and increase customers’ loyalty. Moreover, they should focus on improving the quality of user generated content and pay more attention to support and encourage social interaction to enhance browsing experiences on a SSW.

Existing studies about browsing behavior mostly focus on traditional online e-commerce website. This study represents the first step toward understanding browsing activity on SSW. Moreover, prior studies mainly focused on utilitarian and hedonic browsing experience; however, there is a lack of research on social browsing experience. The current study attempts to fill this research gap.