Travel Review Websites as Information Resources Perceived by Consumers

Abstract

When it comes to tourism, consumer-oriented marketing lies parallel to other businesses. Apart from the old-fashioned and sometimes manipulative methods, such as travel agents’ suggestions, the new savvy tourists opt to conduct their travel plans online with good reasons. Indeed, tourism and tourism products show highly intangible characteristics. Travel review websites (TRWs) are one of the most popular sources to overcome the characteristic of intangibility of the tourism industry. This study investigates the role of TRWs on purchase decision and their manipulating power on purchase behavior perceived by two independent sample groups—academicians and tourists. The results reveal that there are significant differences between the two groups’ perceptions when the objectiveness and consistency of TRWs and factors of TRWs as resources and as manipulators are considered.

消费者导向型营销在旅游及其他行业均十分重要。计划旅游时，除了老式的、操控式的方法（如旅行社的建议），新世代精明的游客多选择在网上计划行程。旅游及旅游产品有着高度无形的特征，旅游评价网站（TRWs）就是其中一个克服旅游业无形性的最流行的平台。本研究探讨旅游评价网站在两个独立样本组别—学者和游客—的感知购买决策及购买行为中所扮演的角色。结果显示，学者和游客对以下几方面的看法明显不同，包括旅游评价网站的客观性及一致性，以及该等网站作为资源和操控者等因素。

Keywords:

• Consumers
• purchase
• electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM)
• review
• websites

Keywords:

• 消费者
• 购买
• 网络口碑
• 评价
• 网站

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank Mrs. Deniz Yuncu for her invaluable contribution to the process of analysis of the study.